LOCAL NEWS
Well, it looked like the week for joke truck crashes. First we had a truckload of cornflakes spill near Wellington, and no, there wasn't a milk tanker or a truck full of bananas anywhere in sight. Then, on Wednesday, we had cooking oil in College Hill but no sign of French fries. We spent the rest of the week waiting for something else. It never came, it was pretty disappointing.
A Pukehina woman gave birth in a Shell petrol station on Tuesday in Papamoa. Pathetic. Lived 50ks from hospital, you'd think they would have had a bit of a better plan. Worse, they names the baby Michelle (My Shell, geddit? Good thing it wasn't at a Mobil station).
The National Party managed to dig itself a deeper hole this week. I suspect Helen and her friends are rubbing their hands with delight. The use of digital voice recorders is suddenly very fashionable, despite the fact that dictaphones have been around for years.
Tuatara reproduction became the saucy news of the week, with jokes about geriatric sex everywhere. The protagonist was a 111 year old male that had contributed to 12 eggs laid by a 70 year old female and was then being introduced to a couple of other females. Tuatara live a long time and certainly pace themselves in terms of fertility.
A tourist died in a quad bike accident west of the Waitomo caves.
We had four die on North Island roads. One was on a motor bike, when he ran into a ute carrying a quad bike. Still no truck though.
By about Thursday, the Olympic fever was dominating everything, there was no news about much else. Michael Phelps won more medals than most countries pretty early on, as expected.
A man's leg was saved thanks to a heroic night rescue on Tongariro. Searchers have not yet found the rest of the man.
WORLD NEWS
Georgia and Russia did manage some airtime, despite the Olympics. Not sure what is going on exactly in terms of who should own what, but let's hope it gets sorted before there are more tears.
Tall black comedian Bernie Mac died this week, he was only 50. Pneumonia and sarcoidosis were the culprits. Nasty. Meanwhile tall black actor Morgan Freeman had a car accident that broke his marriage. Naughty man. Tall black singer Isaac Hayes completed the trio by dying at age 65.
The murder of the father in law of the US volleyball team coach in Beijing was big news because the coach is New Zealand born.
REAL SPORT
Well, we had confusion and drama in real sport this week. Hannah's school soccer game was a semi-final against a depleted Avondale College team looked like it would be a default win to us, then they got some more players so we played with ten a side. Then they had another player arrive, didn't tell us, and we were playing a man down. Then another arrived so they played with 12. Like I said, confusion. Anyway, despite them levelling at 1-1, the pressure told in the end and we won 8-1.
Hannah's club game conflicted with a polo game (which she had to miss). They were playing Hibiscus Coast at home, they scored two goals early but couldn't get any more, final score was 2-0.
The team I help coach played nearby straight after. It was nil all at half time, but we managed to score a goal in the second half. Soon after the goal, the coach, Andy, collapsed and had a seizure. I tried to keep the girls focused, but his daughter on the field had no idea what was happening. I had to sub her off, she asked where her Dad was, and I had to tell her what was happening, and ask her whether he was epileptic or diabetic and things while the ambulance was on the way. He came out of it after about 15 minutes, but they took him away in the ambulance. The father of one girl in the team is a physician of some sort which was very handy.
Rory's U16 team had two wins over the weekend without Rory, who is staying away while his shoulder injury recovers.
Hannah's U16 girls polo team played Rotorua on Sunday. Hannah scored the opening goal, and although it was close early on they pulled away to win 9-3.
SPORT
Not sure why there was no tri-nations rugby. Auckland managed to fend off Taranaki. Last week there were some legendary upsets I failed to mention including Northland beating Waikato, Counties-Manukau beating Auckland, and Manawatu beating Canterbury. Wellington and Bay of Plenty are top of table after two weeks.
I am not going to bore you with Olympic stuff, there are plenty of people already doing that. And no, I did not see any of the opening ceremony, live or highlights. I see no relevance of a bunch of idiots dancing as far as a sporting tournament is concerned. Even worse are the idiots commentating for hours on end by basically telling us what we can see.
Man Utd beat Portsmouth 3-1 on penalties in the Charity Shield. UK Football Premier League starts next weekend. Man Utd play Newcastle.
MY SAD LIFE
I crippled myself again on Monday, I keep doing it. Pulling things in my legs, this time calf on right leg. I either need to warm up or do some stretches or both. Too old to learn new tricks. Over it now, mostly.
Ross got a weird text from Diana. I'm sorry, it's the technology Ross.
I got a text from Heidi saying Jan Willem and Janekke got married on Friday (on the 8th of the 8th, so he can remember his anniversary, I bet).
Got an email from Andy yesterday to say he was back home from hospital and nothing serious in cat scan, not even a cat. I was quite relieved, he's not allowed to drive for a little while but otherwise okay.
Not sure that much actually happened this week, it just seemed to fly by. Pretty much the usual combination of physio trips, trainings, and logistical planning and replanning that seems to occupy our weeks.
This coming Wednesday is our 20th wedding anniversary. To celebrate it we are going to probably do pretty much the same thing as every other of the 7,305 days.
Hannah's junior soccer girls play in their final this Wednesday. Should be a bit exciting.
That will do for now.
11 August 2008
4 August 2008
The All Blacks surprise everyone, the weather continues to be more than polite conversation, Rory reaches 16 - 04/08/2008
LOCAL NEWS
Well we had more weather, hard to describe really, as it just seems to be raising the bar on storms and wetness. Wednesday we have flooding on many roads in Auckland making them impassable. Northland was still flooded from the previous event on the weekend and so took little time to drown on Tuesday and Wednesday.
There were bridges out, roads cut off, slips, 12 metre cracks in the ground (12 metres sounds like it is too big to be a crack, it's a gorge or a valley). Meanwhile, 15 houses in Torbay were evacuated as there was concern about houses falling down the hill.
They reckon four people have died in the weather so far, which for us is a very big number. More than people killed in South Auckland even.
Blue ink was spilled into the Heathcote River near Christchurch. It was supposedly inert, and non-toxic. Better than it being brown I guess.
The SPCA came across two overweight fox terriers this week. Ernie weighs 20kg and Bert a massive 32kg, which is a fair amount for what is in theory a small dog. Bert looked like a dog shaped, over-stuffed cushion, with legs sticking out.
Meanwhile, continuing with the animal theme, a cat that pinches stuff has been in the news more times than I can count. Quite odd, really. That it's in the news, I mean.
There seemed to be lots of coverage about some cruise that went wrong when they were caught in bad weather. Didn't see much myself but lots were talking about it. It listed to port and someone broke a hip (but it was full of pensioners anyway, they break a hip just raising an eyebrow) and someone else lost a finger when a door slammed on it.
A man and woman were shot in Napier, both died, police were looking for the shooter. Then they decided the man was the shooter. Then they stopped looking.
Antonie Dixon, the crazy eyed guy previously found guilty of murder, was found guilty of murder again, despite the sob stories of Jehovah's Witnesses beating him up. He is appealing the verdict. Nice use of public money.
Whakatane is now being treated as a swear word, by some phonetic filters on the internet (like Google). Pronounced by some (including in a good ad on TV) as "whack-a-tane", it seems okay, but pronounce it correctly and it is considered dodgy.
New Zealand and Australian people have been caught up in some internet ticket scam for Olympics, not surprising really.
The National Party seems to be starting to finally unload it's policies, some of which appear likely to lose them some voters, possibly more than they will gain.
WORLD NEWS
A spammer escaped prison, killed his wife and child, then killed himself. As a spammer, quite happy that he had the decency to kill himself, but not sure his wife and child deserved it. Unless they were spammers, too, of course.
REAL SPORT
Well, we had zero real sport this week. Hannah's school soccer team had a bye, but it was cancelled for everyone else. Club soccer was cancelled. Rory didn't play polo while we tried to sort his shoulder out (his left should is knackered and has been since before the Panpac tournament and we really needed to sort it out).
The soccer fields have already been closed for today, and I suspect the rest of the week.
SPORT
Well, the All Blacks won against the Wallabies in the second game, winning 39-10. I was particularly surprised.
Meanwhile the Warriors ended a winning streak by losing to the Rabbitohs.
MY SAD LIFE
Jack has two teeth. Samantha is behind, the pressure is on now.
Rory's 16th birthday passed with little more than a murmur. It was pretty low key. We ended up having a fairly quick dinner at a local restaurant Diana has had her eye on for a while. It was actually very good, quite reasonable, and we were very full. Hannah and I walked home in the rain, before drying off, going to the pool, and getting wet again. Then we dried off again.
For some inexplicable reason, I went to Sylvia Park on Friday morning, before 7am. At least it was easy to find a car park. The 501st guys were in their gear and Kristy was interviewed and there was free coffee (although I had hot chocolate). Meanwhile, Rory slept in to after 11 (and again on Saturday).
I got a talkie watch in the post from Brett on his travels. It's like a talkie toaster, but less obsessive about bread. It goes wild when you change the time.
The Grannies came to dinner on Friday, and Maddie attended also. Maddie made a maple flan thing. I am not normally a flan fan but this one was good, very rich.
A real sportless weekend was very weird, and we felt like we had nothing to do. I did some more work on a problem window sill, it is now ready to start sanding the whole thing to repaint. Hannah and I managed some remedial gardening, between the showers. Nothing major, though, there wasn't time. Garlic has been planted. Much trouble was had, particularly between the children, as the boredom and excess energy from no sport needed to be used.
By Sunday it was getting so bad with sun deprivation that if the sun came out for 30 seconds people all over would go outside and stare at the sky and stagger zombie-like in the bright light. Hannah, Diana, and I went out to see the Lower Nihotupu dam, and it was very full, baby. Then we went to a beach to collect golf balls (as you do, we found three). We managed to hide from the showers in the car and otherwise meander around Mill Bay. We could see the far end of Cornwallis Beach which sort of came and went with the visibility.
Oh well, that will do for now. Whole thing seems pretty dull this week.
Well we had more weather, hard to describe really, as it just seems to be raising the bar on storms and wetness. Wednesday we have flooding on many roads in Auckland making them impassable. Northland was still flooded from the previous event on the weekend and so took little time to drown on Tuesday and Wednesday.
There were bridges out, roads cut off, slips, 12 metre cracks in the ground (12 metres sounds like it is too big to be a crack, it's a gorge or a valley). Meanwhile, 15 houses in Torbay were evacuated as there was concern about houses falling down the hill.
They reckon four people have died in the weather so far, which for us is a very big number. More than people killed in South Auckland even.
Blue ink was spilled into the Heathcote River near Christchurch. It was supposedly inert, and non-toxic. Better than it being brown I guess.
The SPCA came across two overweight fox terriers this week. Ernie weighs 20kg and Bert a massive 32kg, which is a fair amount for what is in theory a small dog. Bert looked like a dog shaped, over-stuffed cushion, with legs sticking out.
Meanwhile, continuing with the animal theme, a cat that pinches stuff has been in the news more times than I can count. Quite odd, really. That it's in the news, I mean.
There seemed to be lots of coverage about some cruise that went wrong when they were caught in bad weather. Didn't see much myself but lots were talking about it. It listed to port and someone broke a hip (but it was full of pensioners anyway, they break a hip just raising an eyebrow) and someone else lost a finger when a door slammed on it.
A man and woman were shot in Napier, both died, police were looking for the shooter. Then they decided the man was the shooter. Then they stopped looking.
Antonie Dixon, the crazy eyed guy previously found guilty of murder, was found guilty of murder again, despite the sob stories of Jehovah's Witnesses beating him up. He is appealing the verdict. Nice use of public money.
Whakatane is now being treated as a swear word, by some phonetic filters on the internet (like Google). Pronounced by some (including in a good ad on TV) as "whack-a-tane", it seems okay, but pronounce it correctly and it is considered dodgy.
New Zealand and Australian people have been caught up in some internet ticket scam for Olympics, not surprising really.
The National Party seems to be starting to finally unload it's policies, some of which appear likely to lose them some voters, possibly more than they will gain.
WORLD NEWS
A spammer escaped prison, killed his wife and child, then killed himself. As a spammer, quite happy that he had the decency to kill himself, but not sure his wife and child deserved it. Unless they were spammers, too, of course.
REAL SPORT
Well, we had zero real sport this week. Hannah's school soccer team had a bye, but it was cancelled for everyone else. Club soccer was cancelled. Rory didn't play polo while we tried to sort his shoulder out (his left should is knackered and has been since before the Panpac tournament and we really needed to sort it out).
The soccer fields have already been closed for today, and I suspect the rest of the week.
SPORT
Well, the All Blacks won against the Wallabies in the second game, winning 39-10. I was particularly surprised.
Meanwhile the Warriors ended a winning streak by losing to the Rabbitohs.
MY SAD LIFE
Jack has two teeth. Samantha is behind, the pressure is on now.
Rory's 16th birthday passed with little more than a murmur. It was pretty low key. We ended up having a fairly quick dinner at a local restaurant Diana has had her eye on for a while. It was actually very good, quite reasonable, and we were very full. Hannah and I walked home in the rain, before drying off, going to the pool, and getting wet again. Then we dried off again.
For some inexplicable reason, I went to Sylvia Park on Friday morning, before 7am. At least it was easy to find a car park. The 501st guys were in their gear and Kristy was interviewed and there was free coffee (although I had hot chocolate). Meanwhile, Rory slept in to after 11 (and again on Saturday).
I got a talkie watch in the post from Brett on his travels. It's like a talkie toaster, but less obsessive about bread. It goes wild when you change the time.
The Grannies came to dinner on Friday, and Maddie attended also. Maddie made a maple flan thing. I am not normally a flan fan but this one was good, very rich.
A real sportless weekend was very weird, and we felt like we had nothing to do. I did some more work on a problem window sill, it is now ready to start sanding the whole thing to repaint. Hannah and I managed some remedial gardening, between the showers. Nothing major, though, there wasn't time. Garlic has been planted. Much trouble was had, particularly between the children, as the boredom and excess energy from no sport needed to be used.
By Sunday it was getting so bad with sun deprivation that if the sun came out for 30 seconds people all over would go outside and stare at the sky and stagger zombie-like in the bright light. Hannah, Diana, and I went out to see the Lower Nihotupu dam, and it was very full, baby. Then we went to a beach to collect golf balls (as you do, we found three). We managed to hide from the showers in the car and otherwise meander around Mill Bay. We could see the far end of Cornwallis Beach which sort of came and went with the visibility.
Oh well, that will do for now. Whole thing seems pretty dull this week.
28 July 2008
Winston in his death throes, bodies popping up everywhere, South Auckland stays suspiciously quiet - 28/07/2008
You know how I have been saying the weather's been bad? Well, it's been really bad. Oh, and we should be getting more.
LOCAL NEWS
A retarded kayaker got lost off Mt Maunganui in the bad weather, he deserves everything he gets. Only a mad man would kayak in this weather, when it has been dangerous just to walk on the beach in many places. Rather than being feared dead, I think I feared he might still be alive.
Earlier in the week there was a bit of fun at Lake Karapiro when a press boat sank while getting shots of Olympic rowers. All the footage disappeared but none of the journos died. Shame nobody had a camera to record the news people becoming the news.
A burglar in New Plymouth was well caught when he chose a flat occupied by a Hurricanes loose forward. He was tackled and held until police arrived.
Bit of a controversy over an airline charging adult rates for a 14 year old passenger then not allowing him to accompany his 2 two year old sister (on the return journey, not the outbound journey, which is a little inconsistent).
As well as Maori Language week, it was Australasian Rail Safety Awareness week. This meant we got lots of ads about being careful around trains. Meanwhile, various shows slipped in some meaningless Maori babble here and there, it was most disconcerting. Today it is back to normal.
Winston went from the frying pan and into the fire this week, with another healthy sum coming from big players in the racing industry (and he is Minister of Racing, don't ask why they need a minister for horse racing, they don't have a minister of roller hockey or scrabble).
Then things went from worse to 28x more worserer for Winston as it turned out Bob Jones had been donating via some anonymous vehicle called the Spencer Trust. Meanwhile Winston continues to show his contempt for the law and I think he has got to the point where only the most irrational voter would consider him worthy of elected office. However, there is no shortage of irrational voters, is there?
This week we also had Condoleeza Rice visiting us, Winston's best mate. Lousy timing for Winston because he should have been basking in reflected glory, but it mostly backfired.
We got tons of coverage of the sob story about how psychopath Antonie Dixon was abused by his mother and Jehovah's witnesses. This, of course, means that chopping limbs off people is completely understandable and rather than jail he should spend time shelving books in public libraries for an hour a week to make up for it.
The coach and father of a young tennis player got the player disqualified for coaching during the game with a concealed earpiece.
A motorcycle collided with a horse, the man died, they didn't mention the horse. Or the motorbike.
Bodies kept showing up in unexpected places. We had one in a central Auckland street, another near the Kowai river, wherever that is, then a man's body was found on the side of the southern motorway on Friday night. Then the kayaker was found on Matakana island (the one who went missing at Mt Maunganui).
A climber died on Mt Aspiring, but it wasn't really a case of finding a body, the other three in his group saw him slip (while wearing running shoes instead of his boots, which were on his back) and when he came to rest 100m down, he was in a state ready to be laid to rest. So they saw him become a body, I suppose.
Hanover Finance, with a supposedly rock solid reputation, became the 23rd finance company in New Zealand to fail. They haven't entirely failed but they are basically knackered because who will invest with them now?
The two major shareholders of Hanover Finance were prominent on the rich list published a few days later. Interestingly enough, John Key also made the list, which I don't think will help him get votes.
A woman was shot in a dairy in West Auckland on Saturday. She wasn't body-fied, and should be okay.
A man was fatally shot on Sunday morning in Waharoa, the place with the straight to Matamata (or from Matamata depending on your point of view). Sunday night, his house got burned. Supposedly as revenge for being shot. I don't think gang members have quite got this revenge thing figured out.
Google must have read my email last week because that added Maori soon after I mentioned it last week. Well they said they had, but I can't find it.
Our youngest convicted murderer, Bailey Junior Kuariki, is back in prison after breaching parole by using drugs.
WORLD NEWS
Fugitive ex-president Radovan Karadzic was apprehended, I didn't actually know he was a fugitive. They seemed surprised he was using a false name, but I can't imagine him hiding for long using his real name. One commentator said that it did nothing for the reputation of faith healers, personally it does not surprise me that they included genocidal maniacs in their midst. Naturally, he will be defending himself, as one would expect.
The Model T is 100 years old this week. I guess that means 100 years of global warming.
Barack Obama set a record for clichés and tired aphorisms in his speech in Berlin. He will be awarded the Cybill Fawlty fellowship for stating the bleeding obvious on his return to the US.
A 15 year old boy in Winnipeg had his fate tarsealed when a truck load of asphalt was dumped and he was buried in it.
Mick Jagger is a senior citizen this week, turning 65 on Saturday. Meanwhile Ron Wood keeps his youth by running off with Russian teenagers.
The credibility of the global warming theory took a hit with "soft hail" in Sydney. It wasn't snow, apparently.
THE GOSS
Okay, this one is real. There was a piece about how film makers were digitally removing Sienna Miller's Brazilian. You have got to be kidding. This is just as bad as the one about them giving Justin Timberlake some artificial shrinkage in some music video (too much salami). Any body that suggests that either change improves the artistic merit of a movie or a video, feel free to explain that one to me.
Also this week, we hear about the disease Winston has been battling since Wednesday. Pecuniary Amnesiitis is the disease of the brain which makes you forget where the money went. We find out how he's been living a secret life without cash, using taxi chits and purchase orders to get by.
We then learn how the majority owners of Hanover Finance appear to have suffered the same affliction.
Police this week will decide not to press charges against Tony Veitch, because he's suffered enough. Being wealthy, white, and short are all things he has to live with and he just wouldn't survive in prison.
Subsequently, the will be a riot at Mt Eden prison as inmates demand refunds on raffle tickets. The prize was getting Mr Veitch as their bitch for a week.
REAL SPORT
Well, despite the continuing rain, we played school soccer on Wednesday. This was the final round robin match and they won 5-0. The don't play next week and play 4th place the week after.
Club soccer was cancelled, again.
Rory's U16 polo team played on Sunday, won about 12-1 versus a B team, as you would expect. However, the girls A team lost 2-3 to a B team which we didn't expect.
SPORT
The much over publicised Deans v Henry game resulted in a clear win for Deans with the Wallabies winning 34-19. I still think that the media here heavily overestimates how obsessed we are with the All Blacks. I wonder if the Rugby Union are starting to realise what most of us already knew.
Warriors had another win, tight game 8-6 over the Storm.
The Waikato (think they are Waikato) Magic made the final of the transtasman netball series which is played tonight.
MY SAD LIFE
I went to see Hannah's teachers this week. Two said she was very quiet in class. "No, Hannah CLARKE," says me. They assured me they had the right person. I still think these things are a complete waste of time. Her English teacher was MIA, I don't think we've managed to see her yet. I suspect she could be fictional.
Saw the twins briefly, and taught Jack to say "Mama". He did it three times, although slowly, it still counts. I did point out to both of them that whoever says "Mama" first gets to be the favourite, I think that motivated him. They are about five and a half months old now.
Brett's gone to Singapore and Hong Kong for work, lucky bugger.
Spoke with Gavin, briefly, Maria is walking. Haven't seen them for ages.
Diana and I went to see the Dark Knight on Friday night. Man, it was long. Yes, aspects of it were quite good but overall it felt laboured, I think. It's not one for the kids.
Hannah and I went jeans shopping. Well, actually, I went shoe shopping and she went jeans shopping. I didn't think any would fit me, because usually they don't stock ones big enough for me in Jeans West, but I ended up down sizing twice before I got the right ones. Third from biggest is pretty unusual for me. Maybe they are just stocking larger sizes. They are stretch jeans, my very own stretch-n-grow.
We popped in to the Goodins on the way to the polo game. Their house is chaos as they prepare for some reconstruction to sort out the leaking issue. Hannah stayed there to make afghans while we went to Millennium.
Rory turns 16 this Thursday. Nope, nobody around here is feeling old….
LOCAL NEWS
A retarded kayaker got lost off Mt Maunganui in the bad weather, he deserves everything he gets. Only a mad man would kayak in this weather, when it has been dangerous just to walk on the beach in many places. Rather than being feared dead, I think I feared he might still be alive.
Earlier in the week there was a bit of fun at Lake Karapiro when a press boat sank while getting shots of Olympic rowers. All the footage disappeared but none of the journos died. Shame nobody had a camera to record the news people becoming the news.
A burglar in New Plymouth was well caught when he chose a flat occupied by a Hurricanes loose forward. He was tackled and held until police arrived.
Bit of a controversy over an airline charging adult rates for a 14 year old passenger then not allowing him to accompany his 2 two year old sister (on the return journey, not the outbound journey, which is a little inconsistent).
As well as Maori Language week, it was Australasian Rail Safety Awareness week. This meant we got lots of ads about being careful around trains. Meanwhile, various shows slipped in some meaningless Maori babble here and there, it was most disconcerting. Today it is back to normal.
Winston went from the frying pan and into the fire this week, with another healthy sum coming from big players in the racing industry (and he is Minister of Racing, don't ask why they need a minister for horse racing, they don't have a minister of roller hockey or scrabble).
Then things went from worse to 28x more worserer for Winston as it turned out Bob Jones had been donating via some anonymous vehicle called the Spencer Trust. Meanwhile Winston continues to show his contempt for the law and I think he has got to the point where only the most irrational voter would consider him worthy of elected office. However, there is no shortage of irrational voters, is there?
This week we also had Condoleeza Rice visiting us, Winston's best mate. Lousy timing for Winston because he should have been basking in reflected glory, but it mostly backfired.
We got tons of coverage of the sob story about how psychopath Antonie Dixon was abused by his mother and Jehovah's witnesses. This, of course, means that chopping limbs off people is completely understandable and rather than jail he should spend time shelving books in public libraries for an hour a week to make up for it.
The coach and father of a young tennis player got the player disqualified for coaching during the game with a concealed earpiece.
A motorcycle collided with a horse, the man died, they didn't mention the horse. Or the motorbike.
Bodies kept showing up in unexpected places. We had one in a central Auckland street, another near the Kowai river, wherever that is, then a man's body was found on the side of the southern motorway on Friday night. Then the kayaker was found on Matakana island (the one who went missing at Mt Maunganui).
A climber died on Mt Aspiring, but it wasn't really a case of finding a body, the other three in his group saw him slip (while wearing running shoes instead of his boots, which were on his back) and when he came to rest 100m down, he was in a state ready to be laid to rest. So they saw him become a body, I suppose.
Hanover Finance, with a supposedly rock solid reputation, became the 23rd finance company in New Zealand to fail. They haven't entirely failed but they are basically knackered because who will invest with them now?
The two major shareholders of Hanover Finance were prominent on the rich list published a few days later. Interestingly enough, John Key also made the list, which I don't think will help him get votes.
A woman was shot in a dairy in West Auckland on Saturday. She wasn't body-fied, and should be okay.
A man was fatally shot on Sunday morning in Waharoa, the place with the straight to Matamata (or from Matamata depending on your point of view). Sunday night, his house got burned. Supposedly as revenge for being shot. I don't think gang members have quite got this revenge thing figured out.
Google must have read my email last week because that added Maori soon after I mentioned it last week. Well they said they had, but I can't find it.
Our youngest convicted murderer, Bailey Junior Kuariki, is back in prison after breaching parole by using drugs.
WORLD NEWS
Fugitive ex-president Radovan Karadzic was apprehended, I didn't actually know he was a fugitive. They seemed surprised he was using a false name, but I can't imagine him hiding for long using his real name. One commentator said that it did nothing for the reputation of faith healers, personally it does not surprise me that they included genocidal maniacs in their midst. Naturally, he will be defending himself, as one would expect.
The Model T is 100 years old this week. I guess that means 100 years of global warming.
Barack Obama set a record for clichés and tired aphorisms in his speech in Berlin. He will be awarded the Cybill Fawlty fellowship for stating the bleeding obvious on his return to the US.
A 15 year old boy in Winnipeg had his fate tarsealed when a truck load of asphalt was dumped and he was buried in it.
Mick Jagger is a senior citizen this week, turning 65 on Saturday. Meanwhile Ron Wood keeps his youth by running off with Russian teenagers.
The credibility of the global warming theory took a hit with "soft hail" in Sydney. It wasn't snow, apparently.
THE GOSS
Okay, this one is real. There was a piece about how film makers were digitally removing Sienna Miller's Brazilian. You have got to be kidding. This is just as bad as the one about them giving Justin Timberlake some artificial shrinkage in some music video (too much salami). Any body that suggests that either change improves the artistic merit of a movie or a video, feel free to explain that one to me.
Also this week, we hear about the disease Winston has been battling since Wednesday. Pecuniary Amnesiitis is the disease of the brain which makes you forget where the money went. We find out how he's been living a secret life without cash, using taxi chits and purchase orders to get by.
We then learn how the majority owners of Hanover Finance appear to have suffered the same affliction.
Police this week will decide not to press charges against Tony Veitch, because he's suffered enough. Being wealthy, white, and short are all things he has to live with and he just wouldn't survive in prison.
Subsequently, the will be a riot at Mt Eden prison as inmates demand refunds on raffle tickets. The prize was getting Mr Veitch as their bitch for a week.
REAL SPORT
Well, despite the continuing rain, we played school soccer on Wednesday. This was the final round robin match and they won 5-0. The don't play next week and play 4th place the week after.
Club soccer was cancelled, again.
Rory's U16 polo team played on Sunday, won about 12-1 versus a B team, as you would expect. However, the girls A team lost 2-3 to a B team which we didn't expect.
SPORT
The much over publicised Deans v Henry game resulted in a clear win for Deans with the Wallabies winning 34-19. I still think that the media here heavily overestimates how obsessed we are with the All Blacks. I wonder if the Rugby Union are starting to realise what most of us already knew.
Warriors had another win, tight game 8-6 over the Storm.
The Waikato (think they are Waikato) Magic made the final of the transtasman netball series which is played tonight.
MY SAD LIFE
I went to see Hannah's teachers this week. Two said she was very quiet in class. "No, Hannah CLARKE," says me. They assured me they had the right person. I still think these things are a complete waste of time. Her English teacher was MIA, I don't think we've managed to see her yet. I suspect she could be fictional.
Saw the twins briefly, and taught Jack to say "Mama". He did it three times, although slowly, it still counts. I did point out to both of them that whoever says "Mama" first gets to be the favourite, I think that motivated him. They are about five and a half months old now.
Brett's gone to Singapore and Hong Kong for work, lucky bugger.
Spoke with Gavin, briefly, Maria is walking. Haven't seen them for ages.
Diana and I went to see the Dark Knight on Friday night. Man, it was long. Yes, aspects of it were quite good but overall it felt laboured, I think. It's not one for the kids.
Hannah and I went jeans shopping. Well, actually, I went shoe shopping and she went jeans shopping. I didn't think any would fit me, because usually they don't stock ones big enough for me in Jeans West, but I ended up down sizing twice before I got the right ones. Third from biggest is pretty unusual for me. Maybe they are just stocking larger sizes. They are stretch jeans, my very own stretch-n-grow.
We popped in to the Goodins on the way to the polo game. Their house is chaos as they prepare for some reconstruction to sort out the leaking issue. Hannah stayed there to make afghans while we went to Millennium.
Rory turns 16 this Thursday. Nope, nobody around here is feeling old….
21 July 2008
Kidnapped Chinese, Indians on the run, a killer Iraqi, and that's just in Auckland! - 21/07/2008
I can't believe I am saying this, but maybe Winston is right about immigration, given events this week.
LOCAL NEWS
It is Maori Language week, so you have to read this with a Maori accent. I have restrained myself and not ended every sentence with "eh". Did you know Google doesn't translate to or from Maori?
A five year old Chinese girl was kidnapped. Sounded like a Chinese community kidnapping deal. A Chinese woman translator involved with 60 kidnappings tried to tell us that it didn't happen very often in Chinese community (yeah, right). Meanwhile, the girl was found on Friday, alive and well. Turned out the kidnapper was Chinese, and a real estate agent.
A high school rugby player died a couple of weeks after a nasty neck injury.
Thirty nine Indians visiting New Zealand on the way to the world youth day papal visit in Australia all disappeared. Immigration officials are checking dairies. By this morning they had tracked down twenty of them, which is pretty impressive. Two are on their way home (genuine Catholics, apparently, not sure why that is remotely important) and they are encouraging the others they have found to head home under their own steam. They can't have hidden very well if more than half were found in less than a week.
Poor old Tony Veitch finally resigned on Thursday, finally realising that the only thing worse than kicking a person when they're down is trying to hide the fact.
Paul Holmes managed to make himself look like an even bigger tosser by spending his second consecutive Sunday Herald column telling us why Veitch is being picked on and it's not fair. There needs to be a new word for pathetic, at it's best it was a guy sticking up pointlessly for a colleague, or perhaps a case of "but for the grace of god…" after his fun in the spotlight with his daughter.
A Christchurch man heard a loud explosion, it turned out to be his Nokia cellphone on the charger. The device was spread over 10 metres. Lucky he wasn't talking on it. The charger was fine…..
On Friday it was National Poetry Day, I will resist the urge to put this in rhyme. News writers everywhere seemed to think rhyming makes poetry, it's very sad.
On Saturday a man threatened police by holding a knife to his own throat. Meanwhile there were two dead men inside the apartment. I am not sure the police were terribly concerned about the threat. Looks like a love triangle. The man was Iraqi, but he spent a lot of time in South Auckland.
Winston finally admitted that New Zealand First had taken money from Owen Glenn. Still no idea why it is such a bad thing. Apparently Winston didn't know it went in to their legal fund, funny how he didn't notice an extra 100k, they must have tons of dosh.
The Auckland Harbour Bridge was closed after an accident on Saturday morning.
Two West Auckland boys did their bit to draw attention away from South Auckland by abducting a fellow 14 year old and molesting her.
The man that killed teenager Liam Ashley in prison van has now attacked a guard, in a prison van. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me….
A funeral director delivered the wrong body, and a family farewelled a strange man rather than their mother. Would it have made any difference who they buried, if they hadn't discovered the error? Not really.
A contractor cut two cables, killing most phone lines in Pt Chevalier. We were off the air for about two days. Didn't impact broadband, though, so not all bad. Second big outage in two weeks.
WORLD NEWS
Meanwhile they had a mass mass with the Pope in Sydney, with over 150,000 Catholics. The prime minister was there as well, prompting many to say "Who's that up there with Kevin Rudd?". I would have thought that false idols must be pretty close to the definition of the Pope, but let's not go there.
Some survey of pop songs has Bohemian Rhapsody as #1, which I can understand. But many of the others were shockers (the list was on onepoll.com, it was really odd). Imagine was the only other one in the list that I could agree with.
Oil prices seem to be easing, about time too.
THE GOSS
I am thinking of maybe adding a section with the sort of stories I expect to turn up the sort of magazines that pay $15m for a photo of the baby of an actor or actress. The following is a small sample.
Paul Holmes reveals his early morning trysts with Tony Veitch (they did work in neighbouring studios, both starting at 6am), and the fact the he, too, was beaten by Tony one day after they broke up. Their adventures on the "On Air Club" will then be serialised for mobile phones.
Owen Glenn will tells all about how his money is considered somehow "dirty", and he doesn't understand why. The spread will include finally admitting he used to sell real estate, used cars, and Amway. After writing the article, the journalist will end up being committed to an institution after trying to wash the hand that touched Owen Glenn for 15 hours straight, this of course, will be in a second article.
Winston Peters gives back the $100k after learning that Owen Glenn used to sell real estate.
I welcome contributions from everyone for this section.
REAL SPORT
Well, Rory's 18B team nearly finished with a win, but they lost 5-6, so came 15th, I think. Hannah's team lost their remaining two games so came 6th.
Hannah's soccer on Saturday was defaulted by the other team but we didn't find out until everyone drove all the way to Botany Downs. Andy's team (that I help coach) had eight players so it worked for them (they had six ring-ins play for them in the end). They got a healthy win, but it was with quite a little help from their friends. The weather was actually quite nice for the game, but wasn't flash before and after.
SPORT
Australia played South Africa in the tri-nations and beat them 16-9.
The Warriors won again, third time in a row. They need to win quite a lot more.
Podraig Harrington won the British Open, second time running I think.
MY SAD LIFE
This week was a bit quieter once the polo finished, which was nice. 12 days solid of visiting a pool up to three times a day was a bit more than you really want. Haven't been to a pool since.
On Thursday afternoon both our phone lines died. Then we worked out that everyone else in our area has no phone either. Sounded like the whole of Mt Albert and Pt Chevalier. We will have so many credits on our account we won't have anything to pay.
We went bowling on Friday, just the four of us. They didn't sanitise the shoes, ugh. Diana owned everyone in the second game, got two strikes. Bowling does seem to get boring pretty quick though, one game is never enough and two feels like one too many. Maybe they should do a 15 frame version.
Diana and Hannah popped in to see Sarah on Friday. I must try to do that.
We also all went to Get Smart on Saturday, with Maddie and Maddie's Mum, Kim. We ended up sitting in three different places because it was pretty crowded and without allocated seating nobody wants to sit next to each other (and Diana wonders why I don't like going . I really enjoyed the movie, it had some pretty formulaic stuff but enough of the original stuff old series was included. I know it wasn't exactly high-brow but very few things make me laugh out loud and this certainly did.
I had two messages and two phone calls from Telecom to check my phone is working. Yes, it is, but it is engaged all the time with customer service calls!!! Sheesh.
The kids are not exactly overjoyed to be back at school today. They are either in shock, or mourning, or both.
LOCAL NEWS
It is Maori Language week, so you have to read this with a Maori accent. I have restrained myself and not ended every sentence with "eh". Did you know Google doesn't translate to or from Maori?
A five year old Chinese girl was kidnapped. Sounded like a Chinese community kidnapping deal. A Chinese woman translator involved with 60 kidnappings tried to tell us that it didn't happen very often in Chinese community (yeah, right). Meanwhile, the girl was found on Friday, alive and well. Turned out the kidnapper was Chinese, and a real estate agent.
A high school rugby player died a couple of weeks after a nasty neck injury.
Thirty nine Indians visiting New Zealand on the way to the world youth day papal visit in Australia all disappeared. Immigration officials are checking dairies. By this morning they had tracked down twenty of them, which is pretty impressive. Two are on their way home (genuine Catholics, apparently, not sure why that is remotely important) and they are encouraging the others they have found to head home under their own steam. They can't have hidden very well if more than half were found in less than a week.
Poor old Tony Veitch finally resigned on Thursday, finally realising that the only thing worse than kicking a person when they're down is trying to hide the fact.
Paul Holmes managed to make himself look like an even bigger tosser by spending his second consecutive Sunday Herald column telling us why Veitch is being picked on and it's not fair. There needs to be a new word for pathetic, at it's best it was a guy sticking up pointlessly for a colleague, or perhaps a case of "but for the grace of god…" after his fun in the spotlight with his daughter.
A Christchurch man heard a loud explosion, it turned out to be his Nokia cellphone on the charger. The device was spread over 10 metres. Lucky he wasn't talking on it. The charger was fine…..
On Friday it was National Poetry Day, I will resist the urge to put this in rhyme. News writers everywhere seemed to think rhyming makes poetry, it's very sad.
On Saturday a man threatened police by holding a knife to his own throat. Meanwhile there were two dead men inside the apartment. I am not sure the police were terribly concerned about the threat. Looks like a love triangle. The man was Iraqi, but he spent a lot of time in South Auckland.
Winston finally admitted that New Zealand First had taken money from Owen Glenn. Still no idea why it is such a bad thing. Apparently Winston didn't know it went in to their legal fund, funny how he didn't notice an extra 100k, they must have tons of dosh.
The Auckland Harbour Bridge was closed after an accident on Saturday morning.
Two West Auckland boys did their bit to draw attention away from South Auckland by abducting a fellow 14 year old and molesting her.
The man that killed teenager Liam Ashley in prison van has now attacked a guard, in a prison van. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me….
A funeral director delivered the wrong body, and a family farewelled a strange man rather than their mother. Would it have made any difference who they buried, if they hadn't discovered the error? Not really.
A contractor cut two cables, killing most phone lines in Pt Chevalier. We were off the air for about two days. Didn't impact broadband, though, so not all bad. Second big outage in two weeks.
WORLD NEWS
Meanwhile they had a mass mass with the Pope in Sydney, with over 150,000 Catholics. The prime minister was there as well, prompting many to say "Who's that up there with Kevin Rudd?". I would have thought that false idols must be pretty close to the definition of the Pope, but let's not go there.
Some survey of pop songs has Bohemian Rhapsody as #1, which I can understand. But many of the others were shockers (the list was on onepoll.com, it was really odd). Imagine was the only other one in the list that I could agree with.
Oil prices seem to be easing, about time too.
THE GOSS
I am thinking of maybe adding a section with the sort of stories I expect to turn up the sort of magazines that pay $15m for a photo of the baby of an actor or actress. The following is a small sample.
Paul Holmes reveals his early morning trysts with Tony Veitch (they did work in neighbouring studios, both starting at 6am), and the fact the he, too, was beaten by Tony one day after they broke up. Their adventures on the "On Air Club" will then be serialised for mobile phones.
Owen Glenn will tells all about how his money is considered somehow "dirty", and he doesn't understand why. The spread will include finally admitting he used to sell real estate, used cars, and Amway. After writing the article, the journalist will end up being committed to an institution after trying to wash the hand that touched Owen Glenn for 15 hours straight, this of course, will be in a second article.
Winston Peters gives back the $100k after learning that Owen Glenn used to sell real estate.
I welcome contributions from everyone for this section.
REAL SPORT
Well, Rory's 18B team nearly finished with a win, but they lost 5-6, so came 15th, I think. Hannah's team lost their remaining two games so came 6th.
Hannah's soccer on Saturday was defaulted by the other team but we didn't find out until everyone drove all the way to Botany Downs. Andy's team (that I help coach) had eight players so it worked for them (they had six ring-ins play for them in the end). They got a healthy win, but it was with quite a little help from their friends. The weather was actually quite nice for the game, but wasn't flash before and after.
SPORT
Australia played South Africa in the tri-nations and beat them 16-9.
The Warriors won again, third time in a row. They need to win quite a lot more.
Podraig Harrington won the British Open, second time running I think.
MY SAD LIFE
This week was a bit quieter once the polo finished, which was nice. 12 days solid of visiting a pool up to three times a day was a bit more than you really want. Haven't been to a pool since.
On Thursday afternoon both our phone lines died. Then we worked out that everyone else in our area has no phone either. Sounded like the whole of Mt Albert and Pt Chevalier. We will have so many credits on our account we won't have anything to pay.
We went bowling on Friday, just the four of us. They didn't sanitise the shoes, ugh. Diana owned everyone in the second game, got two strikes. Bowling does seem to get boring pretty quick though, one game is never enough and two feels like one too many. Maybe they should do a 15 frame version.
Diana and Hannah popped in to see Sarah on Friday. I must try to do that.
We also all went to Get Smart on Saturday, with Maddie and Maddie's Mum, Kim. We ended up sitting in three different places because it was pretty crowded and without allocated seating nobody wants to sit next to each other (and Diana wonders why I don't like going . I really enjoyed the movie, it had some pretty formulaic stuff but enough of the original stuff old series was included. I know it wasn't exactly high-brow but very few things make me laugh out loud and this certainly did.
I had two messages and two phone calls from Telecom to check my phone is working. Yes, it is, but it is engaged all the time with customer service calls!!! Sheesh.
The kids are not exactly overjoyed to be back at school today. They are either in shock, or mourning, or both.
14 July 2008
Big news about a small man, a quiet week in South Auckland, vehicle madness strikes NZ - 14/07/2008
LOCAL NEWS
Local TV Radio sports presenter Tony Veitch was revealed to have paid $100,000 to an ex-girlfriend after inflicting severe injuries on her including four broken vertebrae. It wasn't a drunken car accident, but kicking, which seems pretty bad and charges should really have been laid. We've had flow on update stories all week. From where I sit, it doesn't matter whether he did what he did to an ex-girlfriend, his mother, his child, a complete stranger, an all star pro wrestler, or a dog. It's just not right. And worse, keeping it secret and buying his way out of it is exceedingly cowardly.
Not surprisingly, after the pressure from price rises and petrol, people in New Zealand are buying home brands more, shopping closer to home, and seem to be trying to stem the bleeding.
Vehicle madness #1. A police officer was killed in the line of duty while putting out road spikes to stop the guy that hit him. We had the usual fuss. Wouldn't have happened if he had looked both ways first.
Vehicle madness #2. A drunk driver speeds in a park, hits a curb, misses the ground (ie flies through the air) and drops 20 metres to hit a tree that he never liked anyway. The tree won.
Vehicle madness #3. A 73 year old woman squished herself against her own granny flat with her own car. The timing to get this right is actually quite tricky, when you think about it.
Vehicle madness #4. After #2, the Green party announced a bill to ban cars because of the harm they do to trees.
Vehicle madness #5. After #3, and hearing about #4, the leader of Grey Power started a petition to ban old people from parking cars. He has since been taken to a home for the extremely confused.
The dodgy mouth taping rest home has been closed, didn't take too long.
A 14 year old girl is on the run with a 41 year old man.I believe she is dyscalculic (which is dyslexia with numbers) and thinks he is 14 too. Nevertheless, whilst it may be true love, and he just "wants to protect her", it is exceedingly dodgy (he is ex-con, generally not a nice man).
A winner of the highest order got sprung for faking a $300 Waiheke ferry pass. His technique was legendary. He got an expired pass, crossed out the word June and wrote July in crayon (okay, he used a sticker, not crayon, but crayon is funnier, and the sticker was utterly pathetic). He reckons he had no cash and did it in a hurry, but three weeks later he used it again (and how many times in between, you wonder) and was apprehended. He will be banned from the ferry for two years which will make getting to work exceedingly difficult. There's a lesson there…
Meanwhile, after the trouble with A minus list celeb Veitch, B list celeb Brooke Howard-Smith got in trouble pushing a woman out of a bar.
A paraglider had to make a forced landing at the bottom of a cliff at Taylors Mistake near Christchurch. If he had clipped the cliff further up it would have been a lot worse than a forced landing.
There has been some controversy about New Zealand First receiving a donation from Owen Glenn. I don't understand why it's a bad thing (other than the fact that Winston is a bloody danger to society).
Another fuss this week about making locomotives for our new national rail asset. I thoroughly agree that encouraging manufacturing here is a good idea, even if it does cost a little more.
Everyone in South Auckland behaved this week.
WORLD NEWS
G8 does not interest me so I took no notice.
A New Zealand born Australian solder died in Afghanistan. A car bomb, I think.
Obscene amounts have been paid for photos of the Brad & Ange new babies. $15 million is ridiculous. And who wants to see them? I mean until now, if someone was going to pay to see Angelina's twins, I would have thought they meant something completely different.
The Pope is in Australia for World Youth Day, which I just don't get at all. It seems to be world Catholic day.
REAL SPORT
After the promising start to the tournament, Rory's team lost two games that they could have won. This put them in to play offs for 7th/8th. A team they beat ended up making it directly to semis by beating two teams that beat us. The lead early in their last game, were down 3-6, then scored eight unanswered goals to win 11-6.
Hannah's team won their first five matches, but played terribly at times despite winning. Then they played really badly in a tougher game and lost 3-10. Hannah scored a few goals, was generally playing very well. Some of the others were just shocking. In the loss, Hannah scored a goal from her only shot and there were 22 missed shots at goal. I know winning isn't everything but I have grave concerns about the capability of many of the players in that team.
Rory's 18B team are yet to win a game. They were 5-2 up over Maranui but lost 5-6. They were doing very well, Rory scored two nice goals in that game. I think they have one more game tomorrow.
SPORT
The Boks beat the Blacks, just, in the second match. At 30-28 it was just a case of how soon the clock ran out.
The Warriors had a win on Saturday, for a change.
MY SAD LIFE
Not much happening in our world beyond water polo with up to three trips to the pool a day. We had the billet staying until Friday. I have taken nearly 3,000 photos at the polo so far.
Hannah and I managed to wake up the Goodins on Sunday morning, after wandering the flea market with Nanny. I found the mute button on Pippy (if you pat her she goes quiet). Thomas and Katie seem to have discovered YouTube.
On Tuesday night, Hannah played indoor soccer, and I ended up playing too because there weren't many people there. It was cold, my warm up was getting out of the car. I pulled a lot of things, not bad, because I did slow down. It took about three or four days before I could walk normally.
Diana and Rory went to the Warriors clean up on Sunday while me and Hannah went to the flea market. Not sure how we managed to swing that, but you take your chances I guess.
Question from Diana last night "Why do they call it Two and a Half Men?". My answer "I beg your pardon?". "Yes, it makes no sense, there is JD, Turk, Elliot, Carla, and so on, so why Two and a Half Men?". My measured response was "Well, dear, that's because they are in a show called Scrubs, and aren't in Two and a Half Men, are they?" See Rory Story 1, Diana should be watching her back. (the two shows were being advertised together, because they screen together, but really).
RORY STORY 1
On Thursday, Ollie caught a mouse. He mostly killed it, but not enough. Rory had to finish it off. Not sure I could have, he did well. Now we are nervous about how quick he will be to turn off our machine when we are old. Well, more old.
RORY STORY 2
Maddie had a rough night on Thursday. Rory was off to see her on Friday after his game. Soon after, Diana and I were off to the pool (for a change). We saw her car parked outside the florists, and Rory inside looking very sheepish. Sent him a text that said "sprung!"
Local TV Radio sports presenter Tony Veitch was revealed to have paid $100,000 to an ex-girlfriend after inflicting severe injuries on her including four broken vertebrae. It wasn't a drunken car accident, but kicking, which seems pretty bad and charges should really have been laid. We've had flow on update stories all week. From where I sit, it doesn't matter whether he did what he did to an ex-girlfriend, his mother, his child, a complete stranger, an all star pro wrestler, or a dog. It's just not right. And worse, keeping it secret and buying his way out of it is exceedingly cowardly.
Not surprisingly, after the pressure from price rises and petrol, people in New Zealand are buying home brands more, shopping closer to home, and seem to be trying to stem the bleeding.
Vehicle madness #1. A police officer was killed in the line of duty while putting out road spikes to stop the guy that hit him. We had the usual fuss. Wouldn't have happened if he had looked both ways first.
Vehicle madness #2. A drunk driver speeds in a park, hits a curb, misses the ground (ie flies through the air) and drops 20 metres to hit a tree that he never liked anyway. The tree won.
Vehicle madness #3. A 73 year old woman squished herself against her own granny flat with her own car. The timing to get this right is actually quite tricky, when you think about it.
Vehicle madness #4. After #2, the Green party announced a bill to ban cars because of the harm they do to trees.
Vehicle madness #5. After #3, and hearing about #4, the leader of Grey Power started a petition to ban old people from parking cars. He has since been taken to a home for the extremely confused.
The dodgy mouth taping rest home has been closed, didn't take too long.
A 14 year old girl is on the run with a 41 year old man.I believe she is dyscalculic (which is dyslexia with numbers) and thinks he is 14 too. Nevertheless, whilst it may be true love, and he just "wants to protect her", it is exceedingly dodgy (he is ex-con, generally not a nice man).
A winner of the highest order got sprung for faking a $300 Waiheke ferry pass. His technique was legendary. He got an expired pass, crossed out the word June and wrote July in crayon (okay, he used a sticker, not crayon, but crayon is funnier, and the sticker was utterly pathetic). He reckons he had no cash and did it in a hurry, but three weeks later he used it again (and how many times in between, you wonder) and was apprehended. He will be banned from the ferry for two years which will make getting to work exceedingly difficult. There's a lesson there…
Meanwhile, after the trouble with A minus list celeb Veitch, B list celeb Brooke Howard-Smith got in trouble pushing a woman out of a bar.
A paraglider had to make a forced landing at the bottom of a cliff at Taylors Mistake near Christchurch. If he had clipped the cliff further up it would have been a lot worse than a forced landing.
There has been some controversy about New Zealand First receiving a donation from Owen Glenn. I don't understand why it's a bad thing (other than the fact that Winston is a bloody danger to society).
Another fuss this week about making locomotives for our new national rail asset. I thoroughly agree that encouraging manufacturing here is a good idea, even if it does cost a little more.
Everyone in South Auckland behaved this week.
WORLD NEWS
G8 does not interest me so I took no notice.
A New Zealand born Australian solder died in Afghanistan. A car bomb, I think.
Obscene amounts have been paid for photos of the Brad & Ange new babies. $15 million is ridiculous. And who wants to see them? I mean until now, if someone was going to pay to see Angelina's twins, I would have thought they meant something completely different.
The Pope is in Australia for World Youth Day, which I just don't get at all. It seems to be world Catholic day.
REAL SPORT
After the promising start to the tournament, Rory's team lost two games that they could have won. This put them in to play offs for 7th/8th. A team they beat ended up making it directly to semis by beating two teams that beat us. The lead early in their last game, were down 3-6, then scored eight unanswered goals to win 11-6.
Hannah's team won their first five matches, but played terribly at times despite winning. Then they played really badly in a tougher game and lost 3-10. Hannah scored a few goals, was generally playing very well. Some of the others were just shocking. In the loss, Hannah scored a goal from her only shot and there were 22 missed shots at goal. I know winning isn't everything but I have grave concerns about the capability of many of the players in that team.
Rory's 18B team are yet to win a game. They were 5-2 up over Maranui but lost 5-6. They were doing very well, Rory scored two nice goals in that game. I think they have one more game tomorrow.
SPORT
The Boks beat the Blacks, just, in the second match. At 30-28 it was just a case of how soon the clock ran out.
The Warriors had a win on Saturday, for a change.
MY SAD LIFE
Not much happening in our world beyond water polo with up to three trips to the pool a day. We had the billet staying until Friday. I have taken nearly 3,000 photos at the polo so far.
Hannah and I managed to wake up the Goodins on Sunday morning, after wandering the flea market with Nanny. I found the mute button on Pippy (if you pat her she goes quiet). Thomas and Katie seem to have discovered YouTube.
On Tuesday night, Hannah played indoor soccer, and I ended up playing too because there weren't many people there. It was cold, my warm up was getting out of the car. I pulled a lot of things, not bad, because I did slow down. It took about three or four days before I could walk normally.
Diana and Rory went to the Warriors clean up on Sunday while me and Hannah went to the flea market. Not sure how we managed to swing that, but you take your chances I guess.
Question from Diana last night "Why do they call it Two and a Half Men?". My answer "I beg your pardon?". "Yes, it makes no sense, there is JD, Turk, Elliot, Carla, and so on, so why Two and a Half Men?". My measured response was "Well, dear, that's because they are in a show called Scrubs, and aren't in Two and a Half Men, are they?" See Rory Story 1, Diana should be watching her back. (the two shows were being advertised together, because they screen together, but really).
RORY STORY 1
On Thursday, Ollie caught a mouse. He mostly killed it, but not enough. Rory had to finish it off. Not sure I could have, he did well. Now we are nervous about how quick he will be to turn off our machine when we are old. Well, more old.
RORY STORY 2
Maddie had a rough night on Thursday. Rory was off to see her on Friday after his game. Soon after, Diana and I were off to the pool (for a change). We saw her car parked outside the florists, and Rory inside looking very sheepish. Sent him a text that said "sprung!"
7 July 2008
Pan Pacs in full swing, Dannevirke goes crazy, dodgy broadcasts, good news for Pringles - 07/07/2008
LOCAL NEWS
Weather has continued to be awful. Lots of hail here, snow elsewhere.
Sad news this week that real estate agents are finding economic conditions difficult and 10% have left the profession. Whilst there is one that is older, there are few that have a worse reputation. The flood of sympathy cards and food parcels has been impossible to detect with the human eye.
On July 1, our railways became KiwiRail. This joins the stable of kiwi-named companies run by the government (KiwiBank, KiwiSaver, and Kiwifruit, the gay men's collective).
It's all been happening in Dannevirke. First controversy about a brothel opening in the main street (called Klassi Sheelaz or something, an oxymoron is ever there was one). Second, a man was killed by a plough near Dannevirke. The owner of Klassi Sheelaz wasn't concerned, it was only one less customer. Nothing happened the day after, I looked very hard.
Some Siamese fighting fish were intercepted in the post this week, from Thailand. I think they were alive when detected but not for much longer.
We had a seven year old boy die in Nelson, the step father has been charged, and guess what? He's from South Auckland. So now they are exporting murderers to other places.
National has said they will privatise ACC, not sure why this is so controversial, they had done it last time they were in power and Labour reversed it. Are people's memories that short?
Great bit of guerrilla marketing this week. Some guy put his soul for sale on trademe, it attracted the usual sort of attention that sort of thing does (the media are just sluts, really, for an easy story). Anyway, in a bit of a coup, Hell Pizza bought it for $5000. This generated considerably more than $5k in coverage, so one has to wonder if the whole thing might have been planned.
A DOC (Department of Conservation) worker shot a rare takahe, he thought it was a pukeko (there were 36 on the island, now only 35, he should have known the difference).
A police chase ended in the death of the retarded teenaged chasee. A few more fatal chases might prevent more.
Truckies protested on Friday about a rise in road user charges but clogging main roads. They were pretty sensible, generally, occupying only one lane. Diana went over the harbour bridge which she said was pretty weird with a lane full of trucks coming the other way.
A 14 year old boy was found dead on a sports field near Taupo. They reckon he was drunk, fell asleep, and froze. Is that natural causes?
Asians had a protest march this week, about crimes against Asians. However, the organiser is recruiting help from the triads, which seems to be a little odd. There are rumours that triads are organising local gangs with things like drugs.
A dangerous substance incident where a mystery powder was spread around a park. Wasn't explosive or anthrax, it was cake mix powder.
Sky TV cocked up (literally) when they showed porn on their free to air channel for four minutes during a rugby show. So far the only complaints made have been that it wasn't for longer. No mention of whether the porn channel people got rugby as well.
WORLD NEWS
Nasty incident in Australia where a man killed his wife and two grand daughters with an axe and tried to get his police woman daughter also.
Is it just me or is Gaddafi the Michael Jackson of world leaders? He must have had facelifts, he looks like he always has. He is 66, so I suppose he's not that old.
When the cure is worse than the condition. Two helicopters containing people bound for hospital crashed into each other on the way to the same hospital, and were diverted to the morgue. You'd think choppers were slow enough that you'd see each other, surely?
Nasty incident when lightning struck at a soccer match in Cambodia, which killed three players and injured three others.
A "bulldozer" went amok in Jerusalem. It wasn't really a bulldozer in my book, more like a front end loader, and it was on wheels not tracks. It created mayhem, killing people along the way.
A court in Europe has ruled Pringles are not potato chips. They did stop short of saying they aren't food, which is a shame.
REAL SPORT
Despite all expectations, we did have soccer on Wednesday afternoon. Hannah wasn't in great shape but played. It was against the bottom of the table team, St Dominics, and we won 6-0. I refereed the second half and their coach was trying to spring an offside trap by not defending, it was woeful.
Club soccer was again cancelled on Saturday.
Meanwhile, Rory's Pan Pac tournament started on Friday, with a 9-1 win over North Harbour B and a much tighter 9-8 win over Maranui. Rory scored a goal in both games, generally played pretty well. Then they played Rotorua on Sunday morning, should have been relatively tight as Rotorua lost to Maranui 11-18, so they scored more goals than we did against them (although they let in ten more). It wasn't, ended up being a 22-0 whitewash, Rory scored about four or five.
We play North Harbour today, I think we should win comfortably, and the NSW team ( that our billet is in) tomorrow.
SPORT
Queensland won the deciding state of origin game 16-10. Not really ever interested in that but it is very big in Australia.
The All Blacks beat South Africa in their first Tri-Nations game, 19-10 or so.
Venus won Wimbledon women's, beating Serena, and they won women's doubles together. Federer and Nadal were hammering out a close match, but Nadal won which is quite big news, first time someone has won French and Wimbledon since 1980 (Bjorn Borg).
Lewis Hamilton won British GP.
MY SAD LIFE
We got a call on Wednesday to say that Hannah had actually broken her finger again. Great service, five days after the x-ray. Haven't heard anything yet from who she was referred to.
Sarah and the twins visited this week. I reckon Jack is teething but don't know if any results have appeared yet.
We had a billet staying with us from the Combined NSW High Schools polo team. Cameron, nice kid. Another guy was staying at Rory's friend Cassidy's house, Nathan. They spent a bit of time together as a group. Cameron's parents came over to watch the tournament, their names are Bob and Diana, kind of funny.
It is Heidi's birthday tomorrow.
It is five years today since Dad died, it was also a Monday. Feels like a very long time ago.
Diana has been making a lot of bread to save dough. I think we used 5kg of flour in not much more than a week. The bread is damn good, and it is cheaper than store bought stuff.
My broadband and office phone line failed on Saturday night, about the time of a big lightning strike and is not yet functioning. We found a weird pile of cables poking out of the ground at the end of our street on Sunday, not sure if it is related, they sure looked like phone cables.
Diana took the two billets and Rory and Cass down to Mission Bay where they got some fresh air. I spent a while with them in a mall looking for a Rubik's cube.
We had the opening ceremony last night, there are over 100 teams taking part. I got to climb up inside the pool roof to take photos from above the action in the ceiling of the pool (Paul, you would remember the roof at West Wave, it was quite high).
Diana kind of starts a new job today. Kind of, because she has been doing a little bit of work for them already.
Weather has continued to be awful. Lots of hail here, snow elsewhere.
Sad news this week that real estate agents are finding economic conditions difficult and 10% have left the profession. Whilst there is one that is older, there are few that have a worse reputation. The flood of sympathy cards and food parcels has been impossible to detect with the human eye.
On July 1, our railways became KiwiRail. This joins the stable of kiwi-named companies run by the government (KiwiBank, KiwiSaver, and Kiwifruit, the gay men's collective).
It's all been happening in Dannevirke. First controversy about a brothel opening in the main street (called Klassi Sheelaz or something, an oxymoron is ever there was one). Second, a man was killed by a plough near Dannevirke. The owner of Klassi Sheelaz wasn't concerned, it was only one less customer. Nothing happened the day after, I looked very hard.
Some Siamese fighting fish were intercepted in the post this week, from Thailand. I think they were alive when detected but not for much longer.
We had a seven year old boy die in Nelson, the step father has been charged, and guess what? He's from South Auckland. So now they are exporting murderers to other places.
National has said they will privatise ACC, not sure why this is so controversial, they had done it last time they were in power and Labour reversed it. Are people's memories that short?
Great bit of guerrilla marketing this week. Some guy put his soul for sale on trademe, it attracted the usual sort of attention that sort of thing does (the media are just sluts, really, for an easy story). Anyway, in a bit of a coup, Hell Pizza bought it for $5000. This generated considerably more than $5k in coverage, so one has to wonder if the whole thing might have been planned.
A DOC (Department of Conservation) worker shot a rare takahe, he thought it was a pukeko (there were 36 on the island, now only 35, he should have known the difference).
A police chase ended in the death of the retarded teenaged chasee. A few more fatal chases might prevent more.
Truckies protested on Friday about a rise in road user charges but clogging main roads. They were pretty sensible, generally, occupying only one lane. Diana went over the harbour bridge which she said was pretty weird with a lane full of trucks coming the other way.
A 14 year old boy was found dead on a sports field near Taupo. They reckon he was drunk, fell asleep, and froze. Is that natural causes?
Asians had a protest march this week, about crimes against Asians. However, the organiser is recruiting help from the triads, which seems to be a little odd. There are rumours that triads are organising local gangs with things like drugs.
A dangerous substance incident where a mystery powder was spread around a park. Wasn't explosive or anthrax, it was cake mix powder.
Sky TV cocked up (literally) when they showed porn on their free to air channel for four minutes during a rugby show. So far the only complaints made have been that it wasn't for longer. No mention of whether the porn channel people got rugby as well.
WORLD NEWS
Nasty incident in Australia where a man killed his wife and two grand daughters with an axe and tried to get his police woman daughter also.
Is it just me or is Gaddafi the Michael Jackson of world leaders? He must have had facelifts, he looks like he always has. He is 66, so I suppose he's not that old.
When the cure is worse than the condition. Two helicopters containing people bound for hospital crashed into each other on the way to the same hospital, and were diverted to the morgue. You'd think choppers were slow enough that you'd see each other, surely?
Nasty incident when lightning struck at a soccer match in Cambodia, which killed three players and injured three others.
A "bulldozer" went amok in Jerusalem. It wasn't really a bulldozer in my book, more like a front end loader, and it was on wheels not tracks. It created mayhem, killing people along the way.
A court in Europe has ruled Pringles are not potato chips. They did stop short of saying they aren't food, which is a shame.
REAL SPORT
Despite all expectations, we did have soccer on Wednesday afternoon. Hannah wasn't in great shape but played. It was against the bottom of the table team, St Dominics, and we won 6-0. I refereed the second half and their coach was trying to spring an offside trap by not defending, it was woeful.
Club soccer was again cancelled on Saturday.
Meanwhile, Rory's Pan Pac tournament started on Friday, with a 9-1 win over North Harbour B and a much tighter 9-8 win over Maranui. Rory scored a goal in both games, generally played pretty well. Then they played Rotorua on Sunday morning, should have been relatively tight as Rotorua lost to Maranui 11-18, so they scored more goals than we did against them (although they let in ten more). It wasn't, ended up being a 22-0 whitewash, Rory scored about four or five.
We play North Harbour today, I think we should win comfortably, and the NSW team ( that our billet is in) tomorrow.
SPORT
Queensland won the deciding state of origin game 16-10. Not really ever interested in that but it is very big in Australia.
The All Blacks beat South Africa in their first Tri-Nations game, 19-10 or so.
Venus won Wimbledon women's, beating Serena, and they won women's doubles together. Federer and Nadal were hammering out a close match, but Nadal won which is quite big news, first time someone has won French and Wimbledon since 1980 (Bjorn Borg).
Lewis Hamilton won British GP.
MY SAD LIFE
We got a call on Wednesday to say that Hannah had actually broken her finger again. Great service, five days after the x-ray. Haven't heard anything yet from who she was referred to.
Sarah and the twins visited this week. I reckon Jack is teething but don't know if any results have appeared yet.
We had a billet staying with us from the Combined NSW High Schools polo team. Cameron, nice kid. Another guy was staying at Rory's friend Cassidy's house, Nathan. They spent a bit of time together as a group. Cameron's parents came over to watch the tournament, their names are Bob and Diana, kind of funny.
It is Heidi's birthday tomorrow.
It is five years today since Dad died, it was also a Monday. Feels like a very long time ago.
Diana has been making a lot of bread to save dough. I think we used 5kg of flour in not much more than a week. The bread is damn good, and it is cheaper than store bought stuff.
My broadband and office phone line failed on Saturday night, about the time of a big lightning strike and is not yet functioning. We found a weird pile of cables poking out of the ground at the end of our street on Sunday, not sure if it is related, they sure looked like phone cables.
Diana took the two billets and Rory and Cass down to Mission Bay where they got some fresh air. I spent a while with them in a mall looking for a Rubik's cube.
We had the opening ceremony last night, there are over 100 teams taking part. I got to climb up inside the pool roof to take photos from above the action in the ceiling of the pool (Paul, you would remember the roof at West Wave, it was quite high).
Diana kind of starts a new job today. Kind of, because she has been doing a little bit of work for them already.
30 June 2008
Intelligent design battle in New Zealand, Spain are European champions, beware of people without underwear - 30/06/2008
We've had rain, hail, and further south snow. It has been quite a rough bit of weather, really but I can't see our lake levels being much of a problem.
LOCAL NEWS
There was news that a Christian group has supplied some intelligent design material to 400 high schools. It seems to be being treated with the lack of respect it deserves.
The trimaran Earthrace finally made it around the world, it's been trying and we've been hammered with updates over and over again. It took just under 61 days. Shame it was about 62 days after we lost interest.
Police made an arrest on a seven year old murder case. This wasn't a seven year old that murdered someone or was murdered, but a case that was seven years old. Oh, never mind.
Some guy that is trying to sell an "energy drink" called Cocaine in New Zealand that is sold overseas. Not yet approved because of the caffeine content. Turns out he is a convicted paedophile, not sure what difference that makes, other than proving he is unlikely to be selling this stuff for the public good.
We had a murder in Wanganui, nasty incident where a woman was shot in the head.
A rest home resident had her mouth taped shut by a worker at an Auckland rest home. Not a nice thing to do, but you can easily imagine why.
Despite the weather they still reckon the hydro lakes are low in the south island.
WORLD NEWS
French President and his main squeeze got a shock in Israel when a gunshot went off just as they were boarding their plane. The shot came from a nearby policeman shooting himself in the head. Israeli authorities are now considering changing the rules to stop requiring the use of the fatal salute.
Mugabe had his one horse race in Zimbabwe. Not sure if he's told everyone he won yet, he might wait for it to look like some votes were actually counted.
REAL SPORT
Despite the pretty bad weather this week, Hannah's school soccer team played Avondale on Wednesday in brutally cold conditions with a little bit of wet thrown in. It was my first game solo coaching them, and we had no subs. We really struggled to get out of the box at first but the first time we cleared it we screamed down to the other end and scored. Couldn't score again in the first half. In the second, an opposing player pushed one of ours over, from behind, with both hands, inside the six yard box. It was a penalty from wherever you looked at it but the ref didn't see it that way. We scored from the corner, so wasn't the end of the world. Hannah scored the last goal with a nice little pass back to her and popped it over everyone and in. Now three wins from three and firmly fixed at the top of the table.
Rory found out he won $10 from his swim meet, which he got when he finally went to swim squad.
All soccer on Saturday was cancelled, there was no training all week.
Hannah's club polo team had a warm up game on Sunday. I didn't really want her to play (see below for reason). She didn't play much, team was 1-3 when she came one. She helped tidy things up and they came back to draw 3-3.
SPORT
Paul Chambers rightly pointed out that I neglected to mention Euro last week. We saw Holland knocked out over that weekend and Spain beat Italy on penalties last Monday morning. We've had problems with video feed but was world wide in Turkey v Germany semi-final, which Germany won 3-2 about 1 minute from full time. The Spain v Russia semi-final was close until Spain started to establish their position, winning 3-0 in the end. I thought Russia might have had a chance.
The Black Caps won again, putting them ahead 2-1 in the series with one game left. That weather shortened abandoned game may yet haunt them, but good on them so far. The last game was at Lords on Saturday night, our time, and they managed to win that even more convincingly to take the series 3-1.
This morning, Spain beat Germany in a replay of the war in the 1930's, except there were less tanks. Spain won 1-0, good result, feel a little sorry for the Germans but they have won it a lot already.
MY SAD LIFE
Diana enjoyed her birthday. We had lunch at Prego, for a change. We have been going there more than twenty years. The kids and I made dinner. Rory took the junior role, doing little more than grating cheese. Hannah and I did the bulk of it. Nobody was ill, which was a great relief (it was fettuccine with a mushroom sauce), and some other bits, I forget.
In the rain coming back from the supermarket for supplies on Monday night we picked up Karen and her little dog Poppie. I indiscreetly said to her it was so much nicer seeing her while I was wearing underpants (because on Sunday, after swimming I had to go commando, which was really bad given that we had to go shopping and we bumped into so many people we knew, including Karen). The good news is that I did remember them this week, all three times that I went swimming.
Hannah hurt her finger again at training on Thursday night. We checked it out Friday, it wasn't broken, but pretty sore. We are getting quite a collection of x-rays, we are thinking of decorating her room with them.
We moved the new chest of drawers into her room during the week, rearranged things, and Hannah did a lot of very overdue cleaning. I wouldn't say it is a massive improvement, but it is an improvement, the floordrobe is smaller than it was.
Bit of a funny weekend, weather sucked, no soccer, but a few other things happening around the place.
Mum is in Sydney at the moment, staying with Penny and family.
Seeing Euro 2008 is now finished, I think Paul Chambers must be having his 25th birthday this Wednesday. A quarter of a century, yuck.
Hannah has been a little high-energy this week, had no soccer training (all three trainings cancelled) and only one soccer game. However, she's also had more homework, and had to write a story about being a refugee. It could have been about the suffering of a teenager in the holocaust not having credit on their cellphone but it wasn't. I thought it was a pretty good story, really.
I now have three cellphones. One is work, on Telecom, one is my secret one (the free one that is dying), and one is on Vodafone so the kids can text me. It is also useful for checking the Vodafone networks call routing like over this weekend just gone when we had a big job to do. Yeah, I know, sad.
LOCAL NEWS
There was news that a Christian group has supplied some intelligent design material to 400 high schools. It seems to be being treated with the lack of respect it deserves.
The trimaran Earthrace finally made it around the world, it's been trying and we've been hammered with updates over and over again. It took just under 61 days. Shame it was about 62 days after we lost interest.
Police made an arrest on a seven year old murder case. This wasn't a seven year old that murdered someone or was murdered, but a case that was seven years old. Oh, never mind.
Some guy that is trying to sell an "energy drink" called Cocaine in New Zealand that is sold overseas. Not yet approved because of the caffeine content. Turns out he is a convicted paedophile, not sure what difference that makes, other than proving he is unlikely to be selling this stuff for the public good.
We had a murder in Wanganui, nasty incident where a woman was shot in the head.
A rest home resident had her mouth taped shut by a worker at an Auckland rest home. Not a nice thing to do, but you can easily imagine why.
Despite the weather they still reckon the hydro lakes are low in the south island.
WORLD NEWS
French President and his main squeeze got a shock in Israel when a gunshot went off just as they were boarding their plane. The shot came from a nearby policeman shooting himself in the head. Israeli authorities are now considering changing the rules to stop requiring the use of the fatal salute.
Mugabe had his one horse race in Zimbabwe. Not sure if he's told everyone he won yet, he might wait for it to look like some votes were actually counted.
REAL SPORT
Despite the pretty bad weather this week, Hannah's school soccer team played Avondale on Wednesday in brutally cold conditions with a little bit of wet thrown in. It was my first game solo coaching them, and we had no subs. We really struggled to get out of the box at first but the first time we cleared it we screamed down to the other end and scored. Couldn't score again in the first half. In the second, an opposing player pushed one of ours over, from behind, with both hands, inside the six yard box. It was a penalty from wherever you looked at it but the ref didn't see it that way. We scored from the corner, so wasn't the end of the world. Hannah scored the last goal with a nice little pass back to her and popped it over everyone and in. Now three wins from three and firmly fixed at the top of the table.
Rory found out he won $10 from his swim meet, which he got when he finally went to swim squad.
All soccer on Saturday was cancelled, there was no training all week.
Hannah's club polo team had a warm up game on Sunday. I didn't really want her to play (see below for reason). She didn't play much, team was 1-3 when she came one. She helped tidy things up and they came back to draw 3-3.
SPORT
Paul Chambers rightly pointed out that I neglected to mention Euro last week. We saw Holland knocked out over that weekend and Spain beat Italy on penalties last Monday morning. We've had problems with video feed but was world wide in Turkey v Germany semi-final, which Germany won 3-2 about 1 minute from full time. The Spain v Russia semi-final was close until Spain started to establish their position, winning 3-0 in the end. I thought Russia might have had a chance.
The Black Caps won again, putting them ahead 2-1 in the series with one game left. That weather shortened abandoned game may yet haunt them, but good on them so far. The last game was at Lords on Saturday night, our time, and they managed to win that even more convincingly to take the series 3-1.
This morning, Spain beat Germany in a replay of the war in the 1930's, except there were less tanks. Spain won 1-0, good result, feel a little sorry for the Germans but they have won it a lot already.
MY SAD LIFE
Diana enjoyed her birthday. We had lunch at Prego, for a change. We have been going there more than twenty years. The kids and I made dinner. Rory took the junior role, doing little more than grating cheese. Hannah and I did the bulk of it. Nobody was ill, which was a great relief (it was fettuccine with a mushroom sauce), and some other bits, I forget.
In the rain coming back from the supermarket for supplies on Monday night we picked up Karen and her little dog Poppie. I indiscreetly said to her it was so much nicer seeing her while I was wearing underpants (because on Sunday, after swimming I had to go commando, which was really bad given that we had to go shopping and we bumped into so many people we knew, including Karen). The good news is that I did remember them this week, all three times that I went swimming.
Hannah hurt her finger again at training on Thursday night. We checked it out Friday, it wasn't broken, but pretty sore. We are getting quite a collection of x-rays, we are thinking of decorating her room with them.
We moved the new chest of drawers into her room during the week, rearranged things, and Hannah did a lot of very overdue cleaning. I wouldn't say it is a massive improvement, but it is an improvement, the floordrobe is smaller than it was.
Bit of a funny weekend, weather sucked, no soccer, but a few other things happening around the place.
Mum is in Sydney at the moment, staying with Penny and family.
Seeing Euro 2008 is now finished, I think Paul Chambers must be having his 25th birthday this Wednesday. A quarter of a century, yuck.
Hannah has been a little high-energy this week, had no soccer training (all three trainings cancelled) and only one soccer game. However, she's also had more homework, and had to write a story about being a refugee. It could have been about the suffering of a teenager in the holocaust not having credit on their cellphone but it wasn't. I thought it was a pretty good story, really.
I now have three cellphones. One is work, on Telecom, one is my secret one (the free one that is dying), and one is on Vodafone so the kids can text me. It is also useful for checking the Vodafone networks call routing like over this weekend just gone when we had a big job to do. Yeah, I know, sad.
23 June 2008
South Auckland's reputation continues to head south, the status quo returns in Zimbabwe, weird things in our street - 23/06/2008
LOCAL NEWS
Two people were awarded $1000 each for being served dishwashing liquid instead of mulled wine. Sounds rather odd. Pretty sure it wasn't an accident but why do it?
Another nasty incident in Manukau with a woman being hunted in a car park after her handbag was snatched. They hit her with their car, she got pretty serious injuries. South Auckland is getting very bad press at the moment, a nasty place to visit and you wouldn't want to live there. Arrests have since been made.
The same day, a woman was quoted in the news telling us how we needed positive stories about South Auckland. You have to admit the timing wasn't great. We do get plenty of positive stories:
- police made a positive ID of the gunman
- sexual attacks by HIV-positive men
- man dies after being positive he was on the correct side of the motorway
A senior police officer was killed on a bicycle this week, he was an advocate of bicycling.
A week after black Friday, we had a pretty bad one. Two died and one was injured in a boat crash. A man was crushed by a digger. Another man was toasted when a car caught fire in South Auckland (yep, South Auckland again). It think there was another event as well, but who needs it?
Winston Peters, who has managed to play a part in every government since MMP came along, has announced he is going to re-take Tauranga. I would hope that all his elderly supporters have died or got dementure sufficiently to have forgotten who he is and the younger ones coming through have seen enough to be convinced he doesn't need to be voted for.
Been a bit of gang warfare going on this week. It came to a head in Hawke's Bay, after gate crashing a party. This was not South Auckland, which was a good thing.
WORLD NEWS
As the GW presidency commences it's death roll, he now wants to open up offshore drilling for oil again. Let's think, he has about five months left. One awful thing per month should do it. How about:
- free maccas to every house-bound morbidly obese person;
- a scheme to give firearm offenders a course on firearms use and a second chance (should create a whole generation of law-unabiding sharpshooters;
- compulsory intelligent design instruction in schools;
- repeal amendment 21 (which repeals amendment 18, which was abolition);
- allow the use of pets, mannequins, and sacks of hammers in the car pool lane (because anything with a higher IQ than GW is a person too)
An Australian and a New Zealander fell 26 stories when something failed while they were patching walls on a multi-storey building on the Gold Coast. Not nice.
Morgan Tsvangirai has pulled out of the run-off election in Zimbabwe. That can't be a good sign. He says a fair poll was impossible among all the violence. Mugabe wins because he has more goons, eh? Democracy at work. When you think about it, it does basically come down to money. Whether you buy hired muscle, spin doctors, or advertising, is it really any different?
Yet again, boating in the Philippines is proved to be a little x-games like with 800 missing. Must have been a pretty big ferry.
REAL SPORT
Hannah's school soccer team played Lynfield this week. Lynfield looked scary on paper, having scored ten goals in two games and conceding none. We'd only had one game, had no trainings for two weeks, and didn't look convincing in the first game. However we scored reasonably early, then scored again from a penalty when the goalie picked up a ball passed back to them from their own player, and then the floodgates opened. We won 7-0, which would have been a bit of a shock to the Lynfield team. With only two games under their belt, Springs are now top of the table (some have played three), and Lynfield is second.
On Saturday, in pretty ordinary conditions, Hannah's team played another team that came up to div 1 after grading. They weren't bad but didn't really have much of an attack. Hannah's team won 2-0.
Rory played three games of polo over the weekend for his under 16 team. They drew 5-5 with Northsport, beat Marist 7-3, and then drew 6-6 with the New Zealand U15 team which contained four players who came from our club. Rory scored the last goal to equalise with 5 seconds left, great effort, he was pretty happy.
SPORT
The Black Caps are not having a great tour. In an ODI on Wednesday that they were going to win, rain forced abandonment just one over before they could call it a game. Even at that point I think that if England had taken one wicket with every ball in the unplayed over, New Zealand would still have won (not quite true, but not far off).
The All Blacks beat England 44-12 in the second test but key players Richie McCaw and Ali Williams were injured, not sure how bad.
And the same night the Black Caps managed to beat England, finally, to level the ODI series. Wasn't a pretty game though, nobody got a decent score.
New Zealand won the under 20 world rugby title and the NZ team got three golds in the world rowing event in Poland.
MY SAD LIFE
Spent 90 minutes getting from Roskill to Otahuhu on Wednesday. No wonder I avoid going places. I heard the Mad Butcher on the radio while I was in the car (and the same adverts over and over again). He had a conversation about dyslexia, which he has, except he pronounces is "dillexia". It was pretty sad.
Kind of scary on Thursday, the invasion of the babies. Was leaving to go to a meeting and there were four or five pushchairs charging down the road. It was for a coffee morning that Sarah was attending. I just focused on the road and got the heck out of Dodge. It was nearly as bad as the weird chanting going on in the front house when we walked past it on Sunday, which was very "village of the damned".
On Friday, went for a walk with Sarah and the twins. I was pushing them up and down when Sarah was in the post shop. Lots of randoms kept coming and talking to me, it was weird, haven't had that happen for a while.
We seemed to be seeing the Chambers family serially this week. Hannah and I bumped into Jaqui on Friday, Allan popped in on Saturday, and Hannah and I saw Emma on Sunday when we were, um, shopping. We are going looking for Paul today to complete the set.
We had to go see teachers about Rory's performance in exams, it went okay, just made Thursday night kind of busy.
Hannah delivered her presentation on scallops on Friday, and does sharks today. She seems to be really in to seafood subjects at the moment.
I finished reading the God Delusion. Interesting, but a bit overwhelming at times.
Today is Diana's birthday. A dinner is planned, not sure how good it will be. Scurvy could result.
Two people were awarded $1000 each for being served dishwashing liquid instead of mulled wine. Sounds rather odd. Pretty sure it wasn't an accident but why do it?
Another nasty incident in Manukau with a woman being hunted in a car park after her handbag was snatched. They hit her with their car, she got pretty serious injuries. South Auckland is getting very bad press at the moment, a nasty place to visit and you wouldn't want to live there. Arrests have since been made.
The same day, a woman was quoted in the news telling us how we needed positive stories about South Auckland. You have to admit the timing wasn't great. We do get plenty of positive stories:
- police made a positive ID of the gunman
- sexual attacks by HIV-positive men
- man dies after being positive he was on the correct side of the motorway
A senior police officer was killed on a bicycle this week, he was an advocate of bicycling.
A week after black Friday, we had a pretty bad one. Two died and one was injured in a boat crash. A man was crushed by a digger. Another man was toasted when a car caught fire in South Auckland (yep, South Auckland again). It think there was another event as well, but who needs it?
Winston Peters, who has managed to play a part in every government since MMP came along, has announced he is going to re-take Tauranga. I would hope that all his elderly supporters have died or got dementure sufficiently to have forgotten who he is and the younger ones coming through have seen enough to be convinced he doesn't need to be voted for.
Been a bit of gang warfare going on this week. It came to a head in Hawke's Bay, after gate crashing a party. This was not South Auckland, which was a good thing.
WORLD NEWS
As the GW presidency commences it's death roll, he now wants to open up offshore drilling for oil again. Let's think, he has about five months left. One awful thing per month should do it. How about:
- free maccas to every house-bound morbidly obese person;
- a scheme to give firearm offenders a course on firearms use and a second chance (should create a whole generation of law-unabiding sharpshooters;
- compulsory intelligent design instruction in schools;
- repeal amendment 21 (which repeals amendment 18, which was abolition);
- allow the use of pets, mannequins, and sacks of hammers in the car pool lane (because anything with a higher IQ than GW is a person too)
An Australian and a New Zealander fell 26 stories when something failed while they were patching walls on a multi-storey building on the Gold Coast. Not nice.
Morgan Tsvangirai has pulled out of the run-off election in Zimbabwe. That can't be a good sign. He says a fair poll was impossible among all the violence. Mugabe wins because he has more goons, eh? Democracy at work. When you think about it, it does basically come down to money. Whether you buy hired muscle, spin doctors, or advertising, is it really any different?
Yet again, boating in the Philippines is proved to be a little x-games like with 800 missing. Must have been a pretty big ferry.
REAL SPORT
Hannah's school soccer team played Lynfield this week. Lynfield looked scary on paper, having scored ten goals in two games and conceding none. We'd only had one game, had no trainings for two weeks, and didn't look convincing in the first game. However we scored reasonably early, then scored again from a penalty when the goalie picked up a ball passed back to them from their own player, and then the floodgates opened. We won 7-0, which would have been a bit of a shock to the Lynfield team. With only two games under their belt, Springs are now top of the table (some have played three), and Lynfield is second.
On Saturday, in pretty ordinary conditions, Hannah's team played another team that came up to div 1 after grading. They weren't bad but didn't really have much of an attack. Hannah's team won 2-0.
Rory played three games of polo over the weekend for his under 16 team. They drew 5-5 with Northsport, beat Marist 7-3, and then drew 6-6 with the New Zealand U15 team which contained four players who came from our club. Rory scored the last goal to equalise with 5 seconds left, great effort, he was pretty happy.
SPORT
The Black Caps are not having a great tour. In an ODI on Wednesday that they were going to win, rain forced abandonment just one over before they could call it a game. Even at that point I think that if England had taken one wicket with every ball in the unplayed over, New Zealand would still have won (not quite true, but not far off).
The All Blacks beat England 44-12 in the second test but key players Richie McCaw and Ali Williams were injured, not sure how bad.
And the same night the Black Caps managed to beat England, finally, to level the ODI series. Wasn't a pretty game though, nobody got a decent score.
New Zealand won the under 20 world rugby title and the NZ team got three golds in the world rowing event in Poland.
MY SAD LIFE
Spent 90 minutes getting from Roskill to Otahuhu on Wednesday. No wonder I avoid going places. I heard the Mad Butcher on the radio while I was in the car (and the same adverts over and over again). He had a conversation about dyslexia, which he has, except he pronounces is "dillexia". It was pretty sad.
Kind of scary on Thursday, the invasion of the babies. Was leaving to go to a meeting and there were four or five pushchairs charging down the road. It was for a coffee morning that Sarah was attending. I just focused on the road and got the heck out of Dodge. It was nearly as bad as the weird chanting going on in the front house when we walked past it on Sunday, which was very "village of the damned".
On Friday, went for a walk with Sarah and the twins. I was pushing them up and down when Sarah was in the post shop. Lots of randoms kept coming and talking to me, it was weird, haven't had that happen for a while.
We seemed to be seeing the Chambers family serially this week. Hannah and I bumped into Jaqui on Friday, Allan popped in on Saturday, and Hannah and I saw Emma on Sunday when we were, um, shopping. We are going looking for Paul today to complete the set.
We had to go see teachers about Rory's performance in exams, it went okay, just made Thursday night kind of busy.
Hannah delivered her presentation on scallops on Friday, and does sharks today. She seems to be really in to seafood subjects at the moment.
I finished reading the God Delusion. Interesting, but a bit overwhelming at times.
Today is Diana's birthday. A dinner is planned, not sure how good it will be. Scurvy could result.
16 June 2008
Footbridges attack people, a lucky mistake, car beats bus, free gift in tinned tuna - 16/06/2008
LOCAL NEWS
The dead shopkeeper became quite a controversy this week. It seems the police were reluctant to enter the scene until they were convinced the area was secure. So while friends and family were with him inside, the ambulancemen were there 20 minutes before they went in to assist. This does seem excessive and you wonder why you'd bother using sirens to rush somewhere if you have an extra 20 minutes to get there. Also, while they waited, some others came in and actually stole more stuff from the shop, which is not only incredibly tasteless, but shows that many did not see the risk the police saw.
A quality of living survey has Auckland as fifth, behind Zurich, Vienna, Geneva, and Vancouver. It was the highest placed southern hemisphere city. The bad news is the survey is used to determine how much extra to pay employees that are posted to those places so you don't get much to come live in Auckland.
It was the agricultural field days at Mystery Creek this week. The Goodins were down there for it, as is now the norm. It is traditionally the coldest week of the year but it didn't seem that cold.
Two bodies were found on top of a rail carriage in a shunting yard in Christchurch (funny how we find bodies but don't often lose them). They didn't think it was suspicious, and yet they had not yet determined the cause of death. Later the story unfolded and it sounded like they hitched a ride and maybe met the ceiling of a tunnel on an unplanned basis. Sounds like more accurately there was a rail carriage decorated with an interesting new colour known as "hint of hitchhiker". As for the cause of death, it's not real hard to figure out when the bodies don't appear to have any bones above the C3 vertebra. They have found a footbridge with a matching stain.
We had a car versus bus incident this week, where the car won. It wasn't a proper sized bus, just a mini-bus thing, but the driver ran off the road and down a bank.
A guy found a gold kiwi label pin inside a tin of tuna, he didn't seem to bothered (he found it in his tuna sandwich, actually).
An 80 year old woman died as a result of a home invasion in Manurewa, the place where the liquor store guy was shot. It's getting a bit of bad reputation.
The principal of a Wellington high school has copped flak for naming a girl who killed herself. Apparently it is illegal to say a cause of death before the coroner has done their bit. However, I can imagine that most of the school were already aware and misleading gossip would probably have been more harmful. It is more likely it could be used to put people off the idea than encourage others to do the same thing.
An Avondale man got it wrong on a TAB ticket (ticked the wrong race) and won over $10k, but didn't realise and biffed the ticket in the bin. The TAB noticed the win was not claimed, checked security footage, found the ticket in the bin and tracked him down. Got bit of police work in the name of customer service.
WORLD NEWS
It's bad enough with women's magazines and their headlines of dubious accuracy, but the headline "Bond star slices finger off while shooting" was just bollocks. He sliced the finger-tip off, not even one bone, he was back filming a few hours later. What a crock.
GW met with the Queen. Described (ad nauseum on the breakfast news) as a quiet meeting between old friends. Well, if that is the case, my esteem for the Queen is severely diminished.
REAL SPORT
Hannah's soccer team were missing both their centre backs for the game (Hannah being one of them), but she got there at half time. They were never really in trouble, winning 8-0.
The team I help coach ended up with only seven players, which was woeful, they lost 2-3, which was pretty damn good considering.
SPORT
I watched Netherlands versus Italy, a game with two quite remarkable goals and one more normal one. Holland beating Italy 3-0 was quite a surprise. I also watched Netherlands versus France, yet another game where the Dutch disposed of a world cup finalist, 4-1 this time.
I went with Koos, Julie, Heidi, and others to see the All Blacks play England at Eden Park, they won 37-20.
MY SAD LIFE
Hannah had stage challenge on Wednesday, we saw a version of it on Tuesday evening. She spent 15 1/2 hours at the Aotea Centre, got home at nearly midnight. Unbelievable, when you consider they spent about seven minutes performing.
Rory achieved new heights this week. After a party on Friday night, they went walkabout to Maccas, ordered 20 extra patties and made ridiculous burgers with them. On the walk home they were asked by police if they had been near the weed. The irony is you could smell a ton of it on Bond St walking to and from the rugby.
Rory borrowed a Nintendo Wii off someone this week. It seems quite stupid. People stand there waving their arms about.
Hannah also had her dance show this weekend, which we went to see on Sunday. It went well, I cannot claim to be an expert so won't put a review here.
Once the show was over, Hannah had to do a speech on shark attacks and do two portraits. She did Diana and me. They weren't too bad although I think mine was easier to do.
Hannah and I have just been to the hand clinic for what was the final visit. She's all go, just a couple more weeks of being careful. She did the hand strength thing today and I got to do it too. I got 46 on both hands so I am very well balanced.
Rory is off to Waihi for school today and left early.
It is Diana's birthday next week. I was going to suggest people give me ideas for a present but I think we should save a bit of bother and you just buy the gift and send it directly to her ;-)
The dead shopkeeper became quite a controversy this week. It seems the police were reluctant to enter the scene until they were convinced the area was secure. So while friends and family were with him inside, the ambulancemen were there 20 minutes before they went in to assist. This does seem excessive and you wonder why you'd bother using sirens to rush somewhere if you have an extra 20 minutes to get there. Also, while they waited, some others came in and actually stole more stuff from the shop, which is not only incredibly tasteless, but shows that many did not see the risk the police saw.
A quality of living survey has Auckland as fifth, behind Zurich, Vienna, Geneva, and Vancouver. It was the highest placed southern hemisphere city. The bad news is the survey is used to determine how much extra to pay employees that are posted to those places so you don't get much to come live in Auckland.
It was the agricultural field days at Mystery Creek this week. The Goodins were down there for it, as is now the norm. It is traditionally the coldest week of the year but it didn't seem that cold.
Two bodies were found on top of a rail carriage in a shunting yard in Christchurch (funny how we find bodies but don't often lose them). They didn't think it was suspicious, and yet they had not yet determined the cause of death. Later the story unfolded and it sounded like they hitched a ride and maybe met the ceiling of a tunnel on an unplanned basis. Sounds like more accurately there was a rail carriage decorated with an interesting new colour known as "hint of hitchhiker". As for the cause of death, it's not real hard to figure out when the bodies don't appear to have any bones above the C3 vertebra. They have found a footbridge with a matching stain.
We had a car versus bus incident this week, where the car won. It wasn't a proper sized bus, just a mini-bus thing, but the driver ran off the road and down a bank.
A guy found a gold kiwi label pin inside a tin of tuna, he didn't seem to bothered (he found it in his tuna sandwich, actually).
An 80 year old woman died as a result of a home invasion in Manurewa, the place where the liquor store guy was shot. It's getting a bit of bad reputation.
The principal of a Wellington high school has copped flak for naming a girl who killed herself. Apparently it is illegal to say a cause of death before the coroner has done their bit. However, I can imagine that most of the school were already aware and misleading gossip would probably have been more harmful. It is more likely it could be used to put people off the idea than encourage others to do the same thing.
An Avondale man got it wrong on a TAB ticket (ticked the wrong race) and won over $10k, but didn't realise and biffed the ticket in the bin. The TAB noticed the win was not claimed, checked security footage, found the ticket in the bin and tracked him down. Got bit of police work in the name of customer service.
WORLD NEWS
It's bad enough with women's magazines and their headlines of dubious accuracy, but the headline "Bond star slices finger off while shooting" was just bollocks. He sliced the finger-tip off, not even one bone, he was back filming a few hours later. What a crock.
GW met with the Queen. Described (ad nauseum on the breakfast news) as a quiet meeting between old friends. Well, if that is the case, my esteem for the Queen is severely diminished.
REAL SPORT
Hannah's soccer team were missing both their centre backs for the game (Hannah being one of them), but she got there at half time. They were never really in trouble, winning 8-0.
The team I help coach ended up with only seven players, which was woeful, they lost 2-3, which was pretty damn good considering.
SPORT
I watched Netherlands versus Italy, a game with two quite remarkable goals and one more normal one. Holland beating Italy 3-0 was quite a surprise. I also watched Netherlands versus France, yet another game where the Dutch disposed of a world cup finalist, 4-1 this time.
I went with Koos, Julie, Heidi, and others to see the All Blacks play England at Eden Park, they won 37-20.
MY SAD LIFE
Hannah had stage challenge on Wednesday, we saw a version of it on Tuesday evening. She spent 15 1/2 hours at the Aotea Centre, got home at nearly midnight. Unbelievable, when you consider they spent about seven minutes performing.
Rory achieved new heights this week. After a party on Friday night, they went walkabout to Maccas, ordered 20 extra patties and made ridiculous burgers with them. On the walk home they were asked by police if they had been near the weed. The irony is you could smell a ton of it on Bond St walking to and from the rugby.
Rory borrowed a Nintendo Wii off someone this week. It seems quite stupid. People stand there waving their arms about.
Hannah also had her dance show this weekend, which we went to see on Sunday. It went well, I cannot claim to be an expert so won't put a review here.
Once the show was over, Hannah had to do a speech on shark attacks and do two portraits. She did Diana and me. They weren't too bad although I think mine was easier to do.
Hannah and I have just been to the hand clinic for what was the final visit. She's all go, just a couple more weeks of being careful. She did the hand strength thing today and I got to do it too. I got 46 on both hands so I am very well balanced.
Rory is off to Waihi for school today and left early.
It is Diana's birthday next week. I was going to suggest people give me ideas for a present but I think we should save a bit of bother and you just buy the gift and send it directly to her ;-)
9 June 2008
Road rage spreads to swim lanes, petrol and cheese thefts increase, Hillary throws in the towel - 09/06/2008
LOCAL NEWS
A government survey reveals we are a nation of fatties with only one in three considered an ideal body weight.
There were concerns about "lane rage" this week, like road rage but in swimming pool lanes. It doesn't surprise me, I could bore you for hours about idiots swimming slowly or badly in the wrong lane, hanging off lane ropes, and being utterly ignorant and inconsiderate.
Weird thing in Ngongataha at 3am on Thursday morning, when a body was found next to a hedge fire .
First news I have heard about petrol syphoning was this week, I have been silly enough to say I was surprised that it hadn't been happening more with the price of gas. I am not sure any of us need to be reminded of the price. We noticed this week a drop in the price of the 1kg block of cheese, now 900g to save us money.
Very nasty car accident where a 50 odd yo man announced he was going off to top himself, headed south, drank some booze, smashed in to two other cars, killed a woman, but failed to actually finish himself off.
A shopkeeper was shot in South Auckland during a robbery over the weekend. He later died.
A Polish tramper was lost for a week, but his body was finally found over the weekend. He was attempting a rather challenging trek but he was found in a stream.
The public helped pull four people from a burning van over the weekend. Funny, doesn't really equate with the guy at Rory's school that was knocked off his bike, broke his arm badly, and was ignored by passing drivers.
We continue to be told we are on the brink of a power crisis, with hydro lake levels lowest since 1992.
WORLD NEWS
The focus in the China earthquake zone has moved to unblocking rivers from rescuing people.
It seems like it's all over for Hillary Clinton, but one must wonder whether all this attention on the Democratic primary and the fact that Barack Obama has been in the news way more that McCain (although he does have the French fry connection to help name recognition, whereas Obama rhymes with Osama) that it could help his chances in the Presidential election. And let's be honest, he's not very black. Apparently it's the first time a black man has beaten a white woman in public and not gone to jail.
REAL SPORT
Hannah had her first high school soccer game on Wednesday. It was away at Rutherford High School. Hannah's team has four pretty good players, a number of okay players and some real newbies. They were up 1-0, then conceded a goal to be 1-1 at half time. They had some great attempts in the second half before finally scoring about ten minutes from the end and they managed to keep the opposition out of their goal (although there were some nervous moments).
Didn't quite go so well in her club game. They were down one nil, came back to 2-1 up, but a late penalty against them meant a 2-2 draw. The goalie didn't have a great game, she basically scored both goals. I had to referee the first half, and ran out of steam so got another guy to ref the second (which was when the penalty was, I am really glad I didn't ref that).
The teams for U14 club polo were announced on Sunday, Hannah is in the A team, not really surprised. Don't think the team is particularly strong this year to be honest, I think it was a stronger team last year, although the coach is better this year.
SPORT
The third test between the Black Caps and England started on Thursday night our time. The Poms batted first and was hard to tell who was better placed on day one. Then day two things turned to poo and it just didn't get any better for the Black Caps on day three with them fight a losing battle.
The All Blacks played Ireland, who have never beaten the ABs, and they didn't this time ever, losing 11-21
Euro 2008 kicked off over the weekend. Switzerland and Austria both lost (they are joint hosts). Not sure how I am going to manage to see any of the games. I could subscribe to the UEFA website but you can't copy the video to watch it on a DVD player or anything you have to watch it on a PC and that sucks. Even worse, I could get Sky for a month for $299 (unbelievable) or get it for a minimum of 12 months and that will cost just over $300. So I guess I am not going to see it.
MY SAD LIFE
Rory finished his exams on Wednesday and then achieved nothing for the rest of the week because others still had exams so he had nothing to do.
Today is Ross's birthday, the first of the rush in June. Tomorrow it is Craig's. They are both 44. I suppose a magnum would be appropriate? (you have no idea how long I have waited for that little play on words, so obscure that only the truly sad would understand).
For Ross's birthday, we went to laser strike on Saturday night. It was pretty funny, with a mix of newbies and veterans. The mums (like Kath, Diana, and Sue) who had never been anywhere near such a place, didn't quite know what to expect. They enjoyed themselves a lot more than I would have predicted, in fact I was surprised they all wanted to do it. Rory had a lovely time pwning the noobs. Hannah and I teamed up a bit. I came dead last in the second one when I was trying to survive (and rest a little) and that was lame so I went Rambo styles and came second.
I seemed to see an awful lot of small children over the weekend. Saw Sam and Jack on Friday. Sarah and I had a feeding race and me and Jack won (twins are 17 weeks old tomorrow). Then on Saturday we saw the Bambis with their two girls (although they are like five and three so not that little) between soccer, stage challenge, and laser strike. Gavin and Yana popped in with Maria on Sunday, Maria is about 10 or 11 months old.
Drama this morning at 7:45 when Rory realised he was going to Waihi for the day. That was exciting. Hannah also had lots of homework due, so it was a bit of a scramble. We recycled something Rory used for one thing, and as Hannah helped with the first attempt it seemed okay. Will be interesting to see if anyone notices (it was two years ago so I doubt it).
It's a very busy week this week with the Stage Challenge thing on Wednesday (a performing arts school competition that Hannah is doing) and Hannah's dance show this weekend also. But life should be considerably simpler next week. The additional practises have been crazy.
Oh well, that will do for now. No Hannah section, she forgot to do something.
A government survey reveals we are a nation of fatties with only one in three considered an ideal body weight.
There were concerns about "lane rage" this week, like road rage but in swimming pool lanes. It doesn't surprise me, I could bore you for hours about idiots swimming slowly or badly in the wrong lane, hanging off lane ropes, and being utterly ignorant and inconsiderate.
Weird thing in Ngongataha at 3am on Thursday morning, when a body was found next to a hedge fire .
First news I have heard about petrol syphoning was this week, I have been silly enough to say I was surprised that it hadn't been happening more with the price of gas. I am not sure any of us need to be reminded of the price. We noticed this week a drop in the price of the 1kg block of cheese, now 900g to save us money.
Very nasty car accident where a 50 odd yo man announced he was going off to top himself, headed south, drank some booze, smashed in to two other cars, killed a woman, but failed to actually finish himself off.
A shopkeeper was shot in South Auckland during a robbery over the weekend. He later died.
A Polish tramper was lost for a week, but his body was finally found over the weekend. He was attempting a rather challenging trek but he was found in a stream.
The public helped pull four people from a burning van over the weekend. Funny, doesn't really equate with the guy at Rory's school that was knocked off his bike, broke his arm badly, and was ignored by passing drivers.
We continue to be told we are on the brink of a power crisis, with hydro lake levels lowest since 1992.
WORLD NEWS
The focus in the China earthquake zone has moved to unblocking rivers from rescuing people.
It seems like it's all over for Hillary Clinton, but one must wonder whether all this attention on the Democratic primary and the fact that Barack Obama has been in the news way more that McCain (although he does have the French fry connection to help name recognition, whereas Obama rhymes with Osama) that it could help his chances in the Presidential election. And let's be honest, he's not very black. Apparently it's the first time a black man has beaten a white woman in public and not gone to jail.
REAL SPORT
Hannah had her first high school soccer game on Wednesday. It was away at Rutherford High School. Hannah's team has four pretty good players, a number of okay players and some real newbies. They were up 1-0, then conceded a goal to be 1-1 at half time. They had some great attempts in the second half before finally scoring about ten minutes from the end and they managed to keep the opposition out of their goal (although there were some nervous moments).
Didn't quite go so well in her club game. They were down one nil, came back to 2-1 up, but a late penalty against them meant a 2-2 draw. The goalie didn't have a great game, she basically scored both goals. I had to referee the first half, and ran out of steam so got another guy to ref the second (which was when the penalty was, I am really glad I didn't ref that).
The teams for U14 club polo were announced on Sunday, Hannah is in the A team, not really surprised. Don't think the team is particularly strong this year to be honest, I think it was a stronger team last year, although the coach is better this year.
SPORT
The third test between the Black Caps and England started on Thursday night our time. The Poms batted first and was hard to tell who was better placed on day one. Then day two things turned to poo and it just didn't get any better for the Black Caps on day three with them fight a losing battle.
The All Blacks played Ireland, who have never beaten the ABs, and they didn't this time ever, losing 11-21
Euro 2008 kicked off over the weekend. Switzerland and Austria both lost (they are joint hosts). Not sure how I am going to manage to see any of the games. I could subscribe to the UEFA website but you can't copy the video to watch it on a DVD player or anything you have to watch it on a PC and that sucks. Even worse, I could get Sky for a month for $299 (unbelievable) or get it for a minimum of 12 months and that will cost just over $300. So I guess I am not going to see it.
MY SAD LIFE
Rory finished his exams on Wednesday and then achieved nothing for the rest of the week because others still had exams so he had nothing to do.
Today is Ross's birthday, the first of the rush in June. Tomorrow it is Craig's. They are both 44. I suppose a magnum would be appropriate? (you have no idea how long I have waited for that little play on words, so obscure that only the truly sad would understand).
For Ross's birthday, we went to laser strike on Saturday night. It was pretty funny, with a mix of newbies and veterans. The mums (like Kath, Diana, and Sue) who had never been anywhere near such a place, didn't quite know what to expect. They enjoyed themselves a lot more than I would have predicted, in fact I was surprised they all wanted to do it. Rory had a lovely time pwning the noobs. Hannah and I teamed up a bit. I came dead last in the second one when I was trying to survive (and rest a little) and that was lame so I went Rambo styles and came second.
I seemed to see an awful lot of small children over the weekend. Saw Sam and Jack on Friday. Sarah and I had a feeding race and me and Jack won (twins are 17 weeks old tomorrow). Then on Saturday we saw the Bambis with their two girls (although they are like five and three so not that little) between soccer, stage challenge, and laser strike. Gavin and Yana popped in with Maria on Sunday, Maria is about 10 or 11 months old.
Drama this morning at 7:45 when Rory realised he was going to Waihi for the day. That was exciting. Hannah also had lots of homework due, so it was a bit of a scramble. We recycled something Rory used for one thing, and as Hannah helped with the first attempt it seemed okay. Will be interesting to see if anyone notices (it was two years ago so I doubt it).
It's a very busy week this week with the Stage Challenge thing on Wednesday (a performing arts school competition that Hannah is doing) and Hannah's dance show this weekend also. But life should be considerably simpler next week. The additional practises have been crazy.
Oh well, that will do for now. No Hannah section, she forgot to do something.
2 June 2008
Warning! May contain an excessive number of exclamation marks - 02/06/2008
LOCAL NEWS
We had a bit of good old-fashioned public service junket controversy this week when someone revealed that 94 Housing New Zealand went to a conference in one of the country's most luxurious venues (great publicity for Tongariro Lodge). They spent $65,000, which sounds like a lot, but they reckon was $250 a day. That sounds reasonable but I am sure some more middle of the road venue would have done it for less. Housing New Zealand is responsible for providing low cost housing and so living the high life for a couple of days does seem a little out of place. Not sure it was going to win National the election, but worth a go I suppose.
Assault with a hedgehog made the news here and all over. There was some question as to whether it was alive or not. I am going to solve this mystery, it wasn't a hedgehog, it was a toilet brush head. Meanwhile we heard about the mistreatment of hedgehogs whilst trying to film a news item on the subject.
An New Zealand born photographer has been found dead in Kenya. Probably beaten up for his camera gear.
The mayor of Manukau City collapsed on stage at a concert thing this weekend. He had a mega-heart attack, but is still alive. Not sure what he will do at his next appearance (except that it could be lying in a wooden box).
Had another guy die while evading police, a 31 second chase near Dargaville was enough to finish him off. Saves heaps of time in courts and stuff.
The credibility of global warming theory suffered when we had the coolest May since 1992. That year we had power outages to contend with, it was the year Rory was born.
Being Queen's Birthday Weekend we had some honours given out. Who cares.
The house for auction for $1 reserve sold for $395,000. Rory wanted to flash mob the venue and stop genuine bidders from being able to bid, could have been interesting.
Been a fuss about three high profile cases resulting in not-guilty verdicts. Yes, the police might not be doing their job, but surely it is okay for someone to be not-guilty otherwise why do we bother?
WORLD NEWS
Some guy went to get an old piece of junk (given to him by his rag and bone man grand father when he was a boy) valued and it turned out to be a 2,500 year old solid gold Persian thing that he used to shoot with a slug gun and is now worth over a million dollars. Lucky guy.
Meanwhile a guy in Brisbane had a possum come out of the toilet. Interesting. He filmed it and stuck it on Youtube, I checked out one of the videos, it was crap.
REAL SPORT
Just the one game this weekend, Hannah's soccer team played the team that came second in grading (Fencibles). Previously they lost to them 0-2 when Hannah wasn't playing. It was a tight game, very exciting. They scored first, then we equalised with a very nice goal involving three players. The other team scored again and we hammered their goal but couldn't get one, so we lost 1-2.
SPORT
England managed to win the second test,
The Crusaders sort of scraped passed the Waratahs to win the Super 12 final. Oops, Super 14, whatever.
The All Black squad was named, they play Ireland next week.
MY SAD LIFE
Paul thinks Hannah's bit last week was better than the rest. I am not speaking to him now.
We managed to see some people this weekend, the Goodins on Saturday (Rory arrived home just in time for dessert, the scumbag) and Allan and Jacqui on Sunday.
We had a few other things over the weekend, Rory had three polo trainings and a swim meet. I was at the pool already because Hannah had training at 6:45am so I stayed there to assist (He consisted of the whole team from his swim club so it didn't seem right to leave him alone). It was pretty funny, he hasn't done any solo races in a swim meet before, so his official time in both was the slowest of the race (the group heats based on times, slowest to fastest). Rory was in heat one of six for the 100m breast stroke. He was with a bunch of 11 year olds, standing on the blocks there were all these little guys then a giant in lane 8. He basically beat everyone in his heat by a length, shaving 42 seconds off his time. The poor bugger that was the fastest in the fastest heat got about 3 seconds on his PB and Rory still beat him. In the second race, some kids next to me said "geez, look at the guy in lane 8 go". He was about 0.3 sec off qualifying for level 1 in the 50 free (think his time was 27.56, my best would be about 45 seconds). He needs to make level one to swim in the group he wants in training.
Jono is in Auckland at the moment. He popped in on Friday and distracted me a bit. We wandered around the point a little and saw a weird guy standing on a surf board paddling around.
Hannah is starting to use her finger more, it is going pretty well, she is almost like a normal player in polo training now. The training on Sunday was part one of the selection trial for the Pan Pac tournament in July. Don't think there is too much doubt for her this year.
Rory has been doing mid-year exams this week and has more this week. Not studying as much as he should but he is doing some.
HANNAH'S SAD LIFE
This is part two of Hannah's section in the Monday morning email. I went to school on Thursday with two red pens, at the end of the day I had lost both of them. It was quite sad. In case you haven't heard I want to be a brain surgeon, and a wardrobe full of shoes. What's for dinner tonight? Chicken darling! You have to play the sims2 it is the greatest! I don't recommend the university expansion pack, its really boring. I have my dance concert coming up. I had water polo trials yesterday. I have a broken finger. Yes, life is all about me! Give me shoes! How on earth will I ever earn enough money to buy a house? I'm growing beans. They have started to grow, its really cool. TRISHAN!!!! Haha you just read the word Trishan. AND AGAIN. I like grapes, and dogs. I'd really like a dog dad.
Hamling(my secret other name)
We had a bit of good old-fashioned public service junket controversy this week when someone revealed that 94 Housing New Zealand went to a conference in one of the country's most luxurious venues (great publicity for Tongariro Lodge). They spent $65,000, which sounds like a lot, but they reckon was $250 a day. That sounds reasonable but I am sure some more middle of the road venue would have done it for less. Housing New Zealand is responsible for providing low cost housing and so living the high life for a couple of days does seem a little out of place. Not sure it was going to win National the election, but worth a go I suppose.
Assault with a hedgehog made the news here and all over. There was some question as to whether it was alive or not. I am going to solve this mystery, it wasn't a hedgehog, it was a toilet brush head. Meanwhile we heard about the mistreatment of hedgehogs whilst trying to film a news item on the subject.
An New Zealand born photographer has been found dead in Kenya. Probably beaten up for his camera gear.
The mayor of Manukau City collapsed on stage at a concert thing this weekend. He had a mega-heart attack, but is still alive. Not sure what he will do at his next appearance (except that it could be lying in a wooden box).
Had another guy die while evading police, a 31 second chase near Dargaville was enough to finish him off. Saves heaps of time in courts and stuff.
The credibility of global warming theory suffered when we had the coolest May since 1992. That year we had power outages to contend with, it was the year Rory was born.
Being Queen's Birthday Weekend we had some honours given out. Who cares.
The house for auction for $1 reserve sold for $395,000. Rory wanted to flash mob the venue and stop genuine bidders from being able to bid, could have been interesting.
Been a fuss about three high profile cases resulting in not-guilty verdicts. Yes, the police might not be doing their job, but surely it is okay for someone to be not-guilty otherwise why do we bother?
WORLD NEWS
Some guy went to get an old piece of junk (given to him by his rag and bone man grand father when he was a boy) valued and it turned out to be a 2,500 year old solid gold Persian thing that he used to shoot with a slug gun and is now worth over a million dollars. Lucky guy.
Meanwhile a guy in Brisbane had a possum come out of the toilet. Interesting. He filmed it and stuck it on Youtube, I checked out one of the videos, it was crap.
REAL SPORT
Just the one game this weekend, Hannah's soccer team played the team that came second in grading (Fencibles). Previously they lost to them 0-2 when Hannah wasn't playing. It was a tight game, very exciting. They scored first, then we equalised with a very nice goal involving three players. The other team scored again and we hammered their goal but couldn't get one, so we lost 1-2.
SPORT
England managed to win the second test,
The Crusaders sort of scraped passed the Waratahs to win the Super 12 final. Oops, Super 14, whatever.
The All Black squad was named, they play Ireland next week.
MY SAD LIFE
Paul thinks Hannah's bit last week was better than the rest. I am not speaking to him now.
We managed to see some people this weekend, the Goodins on Saturday (Rory arrived home just in time for dessert, the scumbag) and Allan and Jacqui on Sunday.
We had a few other things over the weekend, Rory had three polo trainings and a swim meet. I was at the pool already because Hannah had training at 6:45am so I stayed there to assist (He consisted of the whole team from his swim club so it didn't seem right to leave him alone). It was pretty funny, he hasn't done any solo races in a swim meet before, so his official time in both was the slowest of the race (the group heats based on times, slowest to fastest). Rory was in heat one of six for the 100m breast stroke. He was with a bunch of 11 year olds, standing on the blocks there were all these little guys then a giant in lane 8. He basically beat everyone in his heat by a length, shaving 42 seconds off his time. The poor bugger that was the fastest in the fastest heat got about 3 seconds on his PB and Rory still beat him. In the second race, some kids next to me said "geez, look at the guy in lane 8 go". He was about 0.3 sec off qualifying for level 1 in the 50 free (think his time was 27.56, my best would be about 45 seconds). He needs to make level one to swim in the group he wants in training.
Jono is in Auckland at the moment. He popped in on Friday and distracted me a bit. We wandered around the point a little and saw a weird guy standing on a surf board paddling around.
Hannah is starting to use her finger more, it is going pretty well, she is almost like a normal player in polo training now. The training on Sunday was part one of the selection trial for the Pan Pac tournament in July. Don't think there is too much doubt for her this year.
Rory has been doing mid-year exams this week and has more this week. Not studying as much as he should but he is doing some.
HANNAH'S SAD LIFE
This is part two of Hannah's section in the Monday morning email. I went to school on Thursday with two red pens, at the end of the day I had lost both of them. It was quite sad. In case you haven't heard I want to be a brain surgeon, and a wardrobe full of shoes. What's for dinner tonight? Chicken darling! You have to play the sims2 it is the greatest! I don't recommend the university expansion pack, its really boring. I have my dance concert coming up. I had water polo trials yesterday. I have a broken finger. Yes, life is all about me! Give me shoes! How on earth will I ever earn enough money to buy a house? I'm growing beans. They have started to grow, its really cool. TRISHAN!!!! Haha you just read the word Trishan. AND AGAIN. I like grapes, and dogs. I'd really like a dog dad.
Hamling(my secret other name)
26 May 2008
Scott Dixon wins Indy 500, lots of verdicts, Hannah scores in soccer and PODs all round - 26/05/2008
LOCAL NEWS
The Muliaga inquest began this week, about the woman who died when the power was cut off in her home and she stopped receiving oxygen. Remembering that she was on oxygen because she was overweight (described now as morbidly obese), the statement from her husband "she died for the want of $34" is bollocks if you consider she could have eaten $34 less of cheeseburgers and solved the problem in two ways. Some of the salient facts included the fact that they had been cut off before, they had been sent some 70 letters about their payment issues, and a number of other facts that show the family had plenty of notice.
We had the final budget of the current labour government. There were finally tax cuts but sod all. One can't help but consider that cutting spending on a bloating public service or even redirecting the money from bureaucrats to teachers and doctors wouldn't be a good thing.
News this week that smart kids do the same in streamed classes or not but the weaker kids do worse when streamed.
Concerns were raised about women becoming worse offenders in drunk driving. Again.
One of life's winners was in court this week for buying chips and M&Ms. He got the munchies, popped into a gas station, while in the (always too long) queue he ate some of the M&Ms. He got to the front of the queue, realised he had no money, but because he had started eating them he had to pay, so tried to pay with his tinny of cannabis, the policeman standing behind him in the queue arrested him.
Some evolutionary wonder woke up in a mini-skip in South Auckland while it was being emptied into a truck. He managed to make enough noise to prevent being munched. Apparently he couldn't get in to a nuclear reactor or incinerator to sleep.
The courts seemed quite productive this week with verdicts in a number of cases. A man was not-guilty of killing his niece (sounds like maybe she died of complications from AIDS), another man was guilty of killing his mother.
The Kahui trial summation took two days and the jury took less than a day to decide it wasn't him. Police say they charged the right person and nobody else will be charged. It's not pretty, at all. Two boys are dead and nobody did it. Meanwhile, Macsyna King, the mother, has been in every sodding paper telling us everything we don't know about her (and we really don't want to know anything).
A well known jockey fell off a bluff while hunting and got himself some serious head injuries.
Meanwhile another man managed to successfully hide under 3.5 tonnes of granite slabs. He is believed to have been trying to emulate the miracle rescues in China. He was described as being critically ill, but newly able to slide under closed doors.
The moron charged with killing two girls when he drove into a crowd of people was finally found guilty, the jury took full advantage of the court's hospitality before delivering their verdict.
A couple of guys went for a joy ride in a micro-light aircraft in the middle of the night in a rainstorm but it ended in a sad crash (a fatal sad crash). Funny, micro-lights used to be tiny a-frames with an engine strapped on and a hang glider style wing but I've seen two in the news that look like baby cessnas.
It is celiac awareness day today, I hope you are all aware of it. It is also "hoody" week. We are supposed to wear a hoody to show we are in touch with youth.
Meanwhile some people are too much in touch with smacking continuing despite the laws prohibiting it.
WORLD NEWS
After stamping to create the earthquake, China stood still on Monday to remember the dead. A steady stream of people continued to be arrested for covering themselves in crap and crawling into wrecked buildings hoping to be the last one found alive.
REAL SPORT
Rory's senior boys won their game on Friday 5-1 or something against a team they have drawn with a couple of times. Rory then took his Ponsonby team and they beat a Glen Eden B team 21-0 (they shouldn't bother playing A against B it is pointless).
Hannah's soccer team had their final grading game, playing the team just below them on the table who had drawn with a team that Hannah's team lost to a couple of weeks ago. On paper, I thought they should have won, and they certainly did. Again, they were 5-0 up at half time. Hannah scored her first goal of the season from half way, a shot that bounced in front of the goalie and went over and in. They also got a nice goal from a corner of Hannah's and a through ball from her also got them a goal. The floodgates closed at half time but they managed to get one more, to make it 6-0. Now, if you read this every week, you will think I am fibbing but they have won four games out of seven and scored six goals every time they win. This was their first away win, and their first win on a small pitch, so that was two hoodoos that have been broken. Oh, and Hannah got player of the day (so did Thomas AND Katie so was a good day all round).
On Sunday night, Rory's team lost 3-5 in the playoff for 5th and 6th. Rory got one goal, missed another he really should have scored.
SPORT
Jacob Oram scored a quick ton to help New Zealand survive in the first test, the Poms didn't even get to start their second innings before the end of the drawn match.
In the second test, New Zealand batted first and actually were in a pretty good position at the end of the second day, with 381 and England at 152/4. At the end of day three it was quite bizarre, 16 wickets fell, New Zealand all out for 114 in their second innings and now England still have a job to win. No chance of a draw with two days left and only nine wickets remaining.
Man Utd beat Chelsea in a penalty shootout after 1-1 draw in the Champs League final. Ronaldo missed one, John Terry missed one too.
Crusaders and Waratahs won their semi-finals and meet next weekend in Super 14 final.
New Zealander Scott Dixon started at pole position for the Indianapolis 500, and although was not in the lead the whole race stayed near the front and was comfortably in front at the right time (the end).
MY SAD LIFE
Sarah popped in with the twins on Monday, they are starting to look like non-newborns now. They are rolling over now, and are 14 weeks old tomorrow I think.
Robyn's funeral was on Thursday, quite well attended with St Mathews in the City packed. The service was over two hours, which does seem a little long. A few people got their cars clamped in a pre-pay carpark (what a crock, you don't get a credit for leaving early and if you take longer that you pre-pay for they clamp you in three minutes and charge you $140 extra).
We went to a school quiz night on Friday with the Bambis and others. It was lame, the questions were very obscure (and had things like multiple choices questions where the answer was none of the options). Then at the end they decided they needed to give stuff away so it dragged out forever.
Rory stayed home sick on Wednesday, and I made him watch (sort of made him) The Hidden Fortress, a 1958 black and white Japanese movie by Akira Kurosawa. He really enjoyed it.
Before Hannah's soccer game I popped in to say hello to Heidi, Pam, and Sjaan up the hill from the soccer ground, it was my walk for the day.
In the local paper there was a photo on the front page about some boys at Pasadena Intermediate taking up knitting. The boy at the front was Tom Hartill, son of a guy I grew up with. The only thing missing on the article was flashing red words saying "please beat us up".
Rory and I did some gardening to fill the bin on Sunday. I noticed two camellias had blossomed, the first of the winter, so I killed them (well put them in a vase).
We saw the Goodins, and Charles, yesterday. Charles is off to work in Singapore for the next 12 months (plus or minus three years). Hannah made a carrot cake and the icing was the best, there wasn't much left to bring home for Rory (who was tired so didn't go).
On the 1st of June, this week, it will be 12 years since we moved in to this house.
I read something about the "great vowel shift" in English which happened between 1200 to 1600. Because I can't read those horrible pronunciation things I can't really tell what happened but it does sound intriguing. They also reckon that the Spanish lisp (like in Barthelona) came from some highly regarded person having a lisp.
The following is an unpaid contribution from my daughter who hijacked my laptop. I take no responsibility for anything contained therein:
HANNAH'S SAD LIFE
Hannah is awesome,
She's cool too,
Everyone loves Hannah,
AND SO SHOULD YOU!!!!!!
I had a French test on Friday, it seemed pretty easy but I don't have my results back yet. Anyone who has spare time might like to go see the chick flick What Happens in Vegas, I saw it Friday night and thought it was quite decent, there were a few good laughs in it but you could easily see them coming. Bags not triple gun padlock pink bunnies, white elephants!!!!! I hope you have enjoyed Hannah's section this week (and just to let you know my life is not sad unlike my fathers!). HANNAH'S ROCK (or maybe just this one) DON'T FORGET TO RECYCLE, TURN OFF LIGHTS WHEN EXITING A ROOM AND DON'T EAT TUNA, WHITEBAIT OR SCALLOPS THEY ARE ENDANGERED!!!!!!!!! Peace out. Can I have some money please????!!!!!
(I sincerely apologise for that bit) Yes, Hannah has turned into a conservation nazi this week and turns off appliances all around the house. It's nice that it isn't just me, but Hannah is considerably worse than me (which is quite a change given that she was the biggest offender until recently). It is beginning to bug everyone, I think.
The Muliaga inquest began this week, about the woman who died when the power was cut off in her home and she stopped receiving oxygen. Remembering that she was on oxygen because she was overweight (described now as morbidly obese), the statement from her husband "she died for the want of $34" is bollocks if you consider she could have eaten $34 less of cheeseburgers and solved the problem in two ways. Some of the salient facts included the fact that they had been cut off before, they had been sent some 70 letters about their payment issues, and a number of other facts that show the family had plenty of notice.
We had the final budget of the current labour government. There were finally tax cuts but sod all. One can't help but consider that cutting spending on a bloating public service or even redirecting the money from bureaucrats to teachers and doctors wouldn't be a good thing.
News this week that smart kids do the same in streamed classes or not but the weaker kids do worse when streamed.
Concerns were raised about women becoming worse offenders in drunk driving. Again.
One of life's winners was in court this week for buying chips and M&Ms. He got the munchies, popped into a gas station, while in the (always too long) queue he ate some of the M&Ms. He got to the front of the queue, realised he had no money, but because he had started eating them he had to pay, so tried to pay with his tinny of cannabis, the policeman standing behind him in the queue arrested him.
Some evolutionary wonder woke up in a mini-skip in South Auckland while it was being emptied into a truck. He managed to make enough noise to prevent being munched. Apparently he couldn't get in to a nuclear reactor or incinerator to sleep.
The courts seemed quite productive this week with verdicts in a number of cases. A man was not-guilty of killing his niece (sounds like maybe she died of complications from AIDS), another man was guilty of killing his mother.
The Kahui trial summation took two days and the jury took less than a day to decide it wasn't him. Police say they charged the right person and nobody else will be charged. It's not pretty, at all. Two boys are dead and nobody did it. Meanwhile, Macsyna King, the mother, has been in every sodding paper telling us everything we don't know about her (and we really don't want to know anything).
A well known jockey fell off a bluff while hunting and got himself some serious head injuries.
Meanwhile another man managed to successfully hide under 3.5 tonnes of granite slabs. He is believed to have been trying to emulate the miracle rescues in China. He was described as being critically ill, but newly able to slide under closed doors.
The moron charged with killing two girls when he drove into a crowd of people was finally found guilty, the jury took full advantage of the court's hospitality before delivering their verdict.
A couple of guys went for a joy ride in a micro-light aircraft in the middle of the night in a rainstorm but it ended in a sad crash (a fatal sad crash). Funny, micro-lights used to be tiny a-frames with an engine strapped on and a hang glider style wing but I've seen two in the news that look like baby cessnas.
It is celiac awareness day today, I hope you are all aware of it. It is also "hoody" week. We are supposed to wear a hoody to show we are in touch with youth.
Meanwhile some people are too much in touch with smacking continuing despite the laws prohibiting it.
WORLD NEWS
After stamping to create the earthquake, China stood still on Monday to remember the dead. A steady stream of people continued to be arrested for covering themselves in crap and crawling into wrecked buildings hoping to be the last one found alive.
REAL SPORT
Rory's senior boys won their game on Friday 5-1 or something against a team they have drawn with a couple of times. Rory then took his Ponsonby team and they beat a Glen Eden B team 21-0 (they shouldn't bother playing A against B it is pointless).
Hannah's soccer team had their final grading game, playing the team just below them on the table who had drawn with a team that Hannah's team lost to a couple of weeks ago. On paper, I thought they should have won, and they certainly did. Again, they were 5-0 up at half time. Hannah scored her first goal of the season from half way, a shot that bounced in front of the goalie and went over and in. They also got a nice goal from a corner of Hannah's and a through ball from her also got them a goal. The floodgates closed at half time but they managed to get one more, to make it 6-0. Now, if you read this every week, you will think I am fibbing but they have won four games out of seven and scored six goals every time they win. This was their first away win, and their first win on a small pitch, so that was two hoodoos that have been broken. Oh, and Hannah got player of the day (so did Thomas AND Katie so was a good day all round).
On Sunday night, Rory's team lost 3-5 in the playoff for 5th and 6th. Rory got one goal, missed another he really should have scored.
SPORT
Jacob Oram scored a quick ton to help New Zealand survive in the first test, the Poms didn't even get to start their second innings before the end of the drawn match.
In the second test, New Zealand batted first and actually were in a pretty good position at the end of the second day, with 381 and England at 152/4. At the end of day three it was quite bizarre, 16 wickets fell, New Zealand all out for 114 in their second innings and now England still have a job to win. No chance of a draw with two days left and only nine wickets remaining.
Man Utd beat Chelsea in a penalty shootout after 1-1 draw in the Champs League final. Ronaldo missed one, John Terry missed one too.
Crusaders and Waratahs won their semi-finals and meet next weekend in Super 14 final.
New Zealander Scott Dixon started at pole position for the Indianapolis 500, and although was not in the lead the whole race stayed near the front and was comfortably in front at the right time (the end).
MY SAD LIFE
Sarah popped in with the twins on Monday, they are starting to look like non-newborns now. They are rolling over now, and are 14 weeks old tomorrow I think.
Robyn's funeral was on Thursday, quite well attended with St Mathews in the City packed. The service was over two hours, which does seem a little long. A few people got their cars clamped in a pre-pay carpark (what a crock, you don't get a credit for leaving early and if you take longer that you pre-pay for they clamp you in three minutes and charge you $140 extra).
We went to a school quiz night on Friday with the Bambis and others. It was lame, the questions were very obscure (and had things like multiple choices questions where the answer was none of the options). Then at the end they decided they needed to give stuff away so it dragged out forever.
Rory stayed home sick on Wednesday, and I made him watch (sort of made him) The Hidden Fortress, a 1958 black and white Japanese movie by Akira Kurosawa. He really enjoyed it.
Before Hannah's soccer game I popped in to say hello to Heidi, Pam, and Sjaan up the hill from the soccer ground, it was my walk for the day.
In the local paper there was a photo on the front page about some boys at Pasadena Intermediate taking up knitting. The boy at the front was Tom Hartill, son of a guy I grew up with. The only thing missing on the article was flashing red words saying "please beat us up".
Rory and I did some gardening to fill the bin on Sunday. I noticed two camellias had blossomed, the first of the winter, so I killed them (well put them in a vase).
We saw the Goodins, and Charles, yesterday. Charles is off to work in Singapore for the next 12 months (plus or minus three years). Hannah made a carrot cake and the icing was the best, there wasn't much left to bring home for Rory (who was tired so didn't go).
On the 1st of June, this week, it will be 12 years since we moved in to this house.
I read something about the "great vowel shift" in English which happened between 1200 to 1600. Because I can't read those horrible pronunciation things I can't really tell what happened but it does sound intriguing. They also reckon that the Spanish lisp (like in Barthelona) came from some highly regarded person having a lisp.
The following is an unpaid contribution from my daughter who hijacked my laptop. I take no responsibility for anything contained therein:
HANNAH'S SAD LIFE
Hannah is awesome,
She's cool too,
Everyone loves Hannah,
AND SO SHOULD YOU!!!!!!
I had a French test on Friday, it seemed pretty easy but I don't have my results back yet. Anyone who has spare time might like to go see the chick flick What Happens in Vegas, I saw it Friday night and thought it was quite decent, there were a few good laughs in it but you could easily see them coming. Bags not triple gun padlock pink bunnies, white elephants!!!!! I hope you have enjoyed Hannah's section this week (and just to let you know my life is not sad unlike my fathers!). HANNAH'S ROCK (or maybe just this one) DON'T FORGET TO RECYCLE, TURN OFF LIGHTS WHEN EXITING A ROOM AND DON'T EAT TUNA, WHITEBAIT OR SCALLOPS THEY ARE ENDANGERED!!!!!!!!! Peace out. Can I have some money please????!!!!!
(I sincerely apologise for that bit) Yes, Hannah has turned into a conservation nazi this week and turns off appliances all around the house. It's nice that it isn't just me, but Hannah is considerably worse than me (which is quite a change given that she was the biggest offender until recently). It is beginning to bug everyone, I think.
19 May 2008
The Austrian Tourism Board despairs, car chases of two varieties, China shudders - 19/05/2008
LOCAL NEWS
We had a comical escape from Mt Eden prison, with the classic sheet rope from one of the towers. There were photos of it everywhere. The guys was caught a few days later.
An immigration official, Mary Anne Thompson, resigned after some fuss about letting relatives in. Then we found out she had misled people into thinking she had a doctorate from the London School of Economics.
It is becoming more apparent that the best way to get publicity is to have the word "naked" in there somewhere. We had some shop assistants wearing only aprons serving in some shop to protest excessive packaging this week. The naked newsreader continued to make headlines.
A Hindu family caused offence by painting a Hindu symbol meaning good fortune on their roof. It looks like the swastika, which seemed to offend the sensibilities of various people (wimps, to be fair, like someone who was the son of a guy who fought in world war ii. I mean, for pity's sake, we don't get offended by red circles because of the Japanese now, do we?).
The body of a lost Israeli tramper was found this week.
Our budget is due to be delivered this week, I am pretty sure it will be a no-win thing for the Labour government. They have waited too long to blink and are going to look very stupid with any sort of tax cut now when it is patently obvious (at least to thinking voters) that we won't be in a position to afford it. I suspect it is just another step in the path to defeat at the coming election.
Couple of car chases in lower north island, one went up to 140km/hr and it turned out to be a 13yo boy. In Dannevirke, which reached speeds of 30km/hr (yes, 30) they needed road spikes, drove for 15km with no tyres. But, considerately, the car chase pulled over to let mobility scooters pass.
Someone revealed a study that showed that advertisements are 30-50% louder than the programs. This doesn't surprise me, I like to mute the TV in ad breaks anyway so I don't really care.
WORLD NEWS
China didn't want to be outdone by the Myanmar disaster, so they had an earthquake (they just got together and stamped their feet). This meant they were both clamouring to out-do the other's statistics. Of course, percentage wise, China never stood a chance. Interestingly, as a percentage of the population, our river tragedy was 0.0002% of the population, whereas 20,000 dead in China was around 0.002% of theirs and 100,000 in Myanmar is about 0.2% of theirs (gives you a feel for scale).
Austria stayed in the news with an quintuple axe murder, way more impressive than our dodgy chainsaw stuff. He killed his wife, daughter, parents, and father in law but didn't have the decency to finish himself off.
REAL SPORT
Saturday, Hannah returned to soccer, and they had another home win. They were 5-0 up at half time but was 6-1 final score. Hannah was back to taking free kicks and corners.
Rory played Sunday, they should have won, they lost I think 5-7. Rory scored one.
Hannah also played polo, probably shouldn't have (she was not in goal, at least) but she did okay, scored one from half way to make the final score a 3-4 loss. I think she really needed to get in there.
SPORT
Both New Zealand teams that made Super 14 semis failed to win their final round robin match. Highlanders beat the Crusaders, Blues beat the Hurricanes.
First test against the Poms began a couple of days ago, rain impacting play, unlikely to get a result. New Zealand not in a good position, they need to bat out the last day to survive, with all wickets intact (technically they don't as they need 3 more runs to get in the lead so every run they get means the Poms have to get them as well).
Portsmouth won the FA cup for the first time since 1939.
MY SAD LIFE
The mother of a friend of Hannah's, Robin Becht, died on Friday. She had fought breast cancer, and we all thought she'd won, but it came back. Robin and Diana knew each other from the gym, and Hannah has known Hayley since they were about three. Hannah went to Hayley's house on Saturday with some other friends and they distracted her a bit, which I think was really good. Diana and Hannah are going to the funeral on Thursday.
A long time friend of Mum's died on Thursday, Libby Lawson. She has known her for nearly fifty years.
We went to the school show on Wednesday, Little Shop of Horrors. It was done very well, it was a lot of fun, there were about seven or eight people in it that I know.
On Saturday night we went to a local bar with some people (including Koos, Julie, and Heidi). The drinks were even free for a while, but I had to get up at 5am to take Hannah to polo training on Sunday morning so we didn't get too carried away.
The Listener crossword has become a bit of a ritual in our house for me and Diana to do, with us competing over who gets it first, but on Sunday it arrived home (after being partially done in the car on the way home) and was done by me and Rory, we finished it completely before she got inside from getting the washing. Was pretty unfair. We might need to photocopy it like Mum does.
The bread extravaganza continues, with Saturday including three different styles (granny bread, croissants, and baps) and Sunday night was pita bread. Diana reckons that we are saving a lot because we are buying less normal bread. Only problem is the stuff never lasts (as in it is eaten, no risk of going stale).
I was suffering a bit this week, a weird nerve thing on the left hand side of my face. No rash so it wasn't shingles, but it really hurt. Doctor told me to just chew the panadols which did help After a few days it started to improve but it is still there.
We had a comical escape from Mt Eden prison, with the classic sheet rope from one of the towers. There were photos of it everywhere. The guys was caught a few days later.
An immigration official, Mary Anne Thompson, resigned after some fuss about letting relatives in. Then we found out she had misled people into thinking she had a doctorate from the London School of Economics.
It is becoming more apparent that the best way to get publicity is to have the word "naked" in there somewhere. We had some shop assistants wearing only aprons serving in some shop to protest excessive packaging this week. The naked newsreader continued to make headlines.
A Hindu family caused offence by painting a Hindu symbol meaning good fortune on their roof. It looks like the swastika, which seemed to offend the sensibilities of various people (wimps, to be fair, like someone who was the son of a guy who fought in world war ii. I mean, for pity's sake, we don't get offended by red circles because of the Japanese now, do we?).
The body of a lost Israeli tramper was found this week.
Our budget is due to be delivered this week, I am pretty sure it will be a no-win thing for the Labour government. They have waited too long to blink and are going to look very stupid with any sort of tax cut now when it is patently obvious (at least to thinking voters) that we won't be in a position to afford it. I suspect it is just another step in the path to defeat at the coming election.
Couple of car chases in lower north island, one went up to 140km/hr and it turned out to be a 13yo boy. In Dannevirke, which reached speeds of 30km/hr (yes, 30) they needed road spikes, drove for 15km with no tyres. But, considerately, the car chase pulled over to let mobility scooters pass.
Someone revealed a study that showed that advertisements are 30-50% louder than the programs. This doesn't surprise me, I like to mute the TV in ad breaks anyway so I don't really care.
WORLD NEWS
China didn't want to be outdone by the Myanmar disaster, so they had an earthquake (they just got together and stamped their feet). This meant they were both clamouring to out-do the other's statistics. Of course, percentage wise, China never stood a chance. Interestingly, as a percentage of the population, our river tragedy was 0.0002% of the population, whereas 20,000 dead in China was around 0.002% of theirs and 100,000 in Myanmar is about 0.2% of theirs (gives you a feel for scale).
Austria stayed in the news with an quintuple axe murder, way more impressive than our dodgy chainsaw stuff. He killed his wife, daughter, parents, and father in law but didn't have the decency to finish himself off.
REAL SPORT
Saturday, Hannah returned to soccer, and they had another home win. They were 5-0 up at half time but was 6-1 final score. Hannah was back to taking free kicks and corners.
Rory played Sunday, they should have won, they lost I think 5-7. Rory scored one.
Hannah also played polo, probably shouldn't have (she was not in goal, at least) but she did okay, scored one from half way to make the final score a 3-4 loss. I think she really needed to get in there.
SPORT
Both New Zealand teams that made Super 14 semis failed to win their final round robin match. Highlanders beat the Crusaders, Blues beat the Hurricanes.
First test against the Poms began a couple of days ago, rain impacting play, unlikely to get a result. New Zealand not in a good position, they need to bat out the last day to survive, with all wickets intact (technically they don't as they need 3 more runs to get in the lead so every run they get means the Poms have to get them as well).
Portsmouth won the FA cup for the first time since 1939.
MY SAD LIFE
The mother of a friend of Hannah's, Robin Becht, died on Friday. She had fought breast cancer, and we all thought she'd won, but it came back. Robin and Diana knew each other from the gym, and Hannah has known Hayley since they were about three. Hannah went to Hayley's house on Saturday with some other friends and they distracted her a bit, which I think was really good. Diana and Hannah are going to the funeral on Thursday.
A long time friend of Mum's died on Thursday, Libby Lawson. She has known her for nearly fifty years.
We went to the school show on Wednesday, Little Shop of Horrors. It was done very well, it was a lot of fun, there were about seven or eight people in it that I know.
On Saturday night we went to a local bar with some people (including Koos, Julie, and Heidi). The drinks were even free for a while, but I had to get up at 5am to take Hannah to polo training on Sunday morning so we didn't get too carried away.
The Listener crossword has become a bit of a ritual in our house for me and Diana to do, with us competing over who gets it first, but on Sunday it arrived home (after being partially done in the car on the way home) and was done by me and Rory, we finished it completely before she got inside from getting the washing. Was pretty unfair. We might need to photocopy it like Mum does.
The bread extravaganza continues, with Saturday including three different styles (granny bread, croissants, and baps) and Sunday night was pita bread. Diana reckons that we are saving a lot because we are buying less normal bread. Only problem is the stuff never lasts (as in it is eaten, no risk of going stale).
I was suffering a bit this week, a weird nerve thing on the left hand side of my face. No rash so it wasn't shingles, but it really hurt. Doctor told me to just chew the panadols which did help After a few days it started to improve but it is still there.
12 May 2008
Stolen pubs, player poaching, another broken bone in the (newly philosophical) Clarke house - 12/05/2008
LOCAL NEWS
Our youngest ever convicted murderer, Bailey Junior Kuariki, is now out on bail. Bailey is now a bailee. (sorry, couldn't resist)
The government purchase of the railways prompted breakfast television to come up with the dream team for the board. It included such glitterati as David Benson-Pope (the student basher), Taito Philip Field (the immigration scam minister), and a host of others. It was pretty funny, a list of the Labour Government's embarrassments and failures, an off the cuff thing which deserved a wider audience.
A pub was stolen from south Auckland this week. That's right, a pub was stolen, not burgled. It was a portable pub, obviously a little too portable. The west-coast owners vowed to de-knacker the perpetrators and send the said off cuts to their mums in a lunch box.
We had two retards facing off on a one way bridge down near Queenstown, nobody would back down until the police arrived. So pathetic. Not sure if either was a tourist, but you would suspect they were (not necessarily from overseas, a tourist from outside the area is what I mean).
Big fuss about the New Zealand representative for Miss Universe, a Massey University graduate, when the university displayed a photo of her in a bikini (rather than a gown). Was it that inappropriate? Perhaps. Did it generate publicity, ooooh yes.
A large number a Killer Beez (a local gang) were arrested for manufacture and sale of "P". They had 200k in cash. A replay of an interview with the leader of Killer Beez was shown where he was saying he didn't do drugs, didn't make drugs, didn't sell drugs, and you know he looked like he was lying through his teeth (body language can provide pretty good hints to even a bozo like me, see below for another observation along those lines).
Bit of a fuss about player poaching at high school level again this week. Mt Albert Grammar has been done for two offences. We know they have done it in polo, but that wasn't one of them. Approaching a kid to come to your school so they can play a sport is apparently verboten, but I don't actually see why it should be. A player would be flattered and if the sport is important to them they might want to do it. Why should they not be allowed?
A guy attacked police with a chainsaw. Police hit him with their car. No, they drove it. Would have been cooler if they ripped of the exhaust pipe and slapped him silly with it. After the Tokeroa chainsaw pseudo-massacre, we seem to be favouring the chainsaw as a weapon.
Meanwhile a man took a chainsaw as hand luggage on a plane, because it wasn't in the list of dangerous items (like nail scissors and pocket knives).
WORLD NEWS
The weather in Myanmar seems to have accounted for 22,000 people, the number climbed a couple of times. The regime there seems to be perfect to maximise damage and minimise recovery. Funny how when one person kills another it is murder but when a regime neglects people allowing tens of thousands to die it isn't.
REAL SPORT
Rory's team lost 5-6 in a game they really should have won on Friday night, it was pretty sad. Then Hannah's team, without two of their best three players (see later for why one of them didn't play), lost 0-9 in a game that should have been winnable.
Hannah's soccer team lost 0-2 against a strong team but it could have been better with Hannah playing. Still grading so not the end of the world.
Rory's team won 9-4 against Sacred Heart on Sunday afternoon. Rory scored three for us and one for them (he tried to deflect a shot, but didn't quite work).
Hannah's two school polo teams had games on Sunday but she didn't go (although she was supposed to). Don't know how they went but suspect they struggled.
SPORT
New Zealander Scott Dixon won pole position for the Indy 500, which is pretty cool. Not sure when the race is, possibly this morning.
Only one week of round robin left of Super 14. Teams will make semi-finals, I am sure. Meanwhile, rugby is generally considered to be in trouble as more and more people lose interest.
Last week of premiership this weekend. This is when all the teams play their last game at the same time so nobody knows what they need based on other results. Chelsea needed a win but they drew against Bolton 1-1, Man Utd needed a win and they got a 2-0 win over Wigan. Liverpool beat Spurs 2-0, Middlesbrough beat Man City 8-1 (ouch), Arsenal beat Sunderland 1-0. So Man Utd wins, two points clear of Chelsea, Arsenal third.
MY SAD LIFE
Hannah hurt her right index finger at PE on Monday. Couldn't tell how bad, but she was doing cartwheels at dancing that night (no, don't go there, seriously). She went to get it looked at properly on Tuesday, it was broken but not seriously. The x-ray revealed that there are still growth plates in her bones so she hasn't stopped growing yet. She then went to a variety of people over the next few days (plastic surgeon, hand person, you name it). This included an 8am appointment this morning. She will slowly get back in sport and dancing but goal keeping in polo could be a while off.
It was Ben Grant's birthday on Sunday, he is now four! Mum has her birthday on Wednesday.
Hannah showed me an interesting thing in a TV show she was watching. A woman with quite a large nose was interviewing two people and you could see the female interviewees eyes were going from looking her in the eye to checking out the proboscis, it was pretty funny.
Rory, Maddie, and I worked on rearranging his room, and cleaning as we went. We removed a bit of detritus from my time, recovered some wild socks, plates, and so forth. He now has comfortable seating for six, and he reckons can sleep about 8 in comfort. His definition of comfort is one that I wasn't previously aware of.
Bigger news is that Maddie took Rory off for a hair cut on Saturday (it being an even numbered year and everything). It's a lot shorter but still relatively long. At least he can see in the pool now. And where he is walking, etc.
We had lunch with Granny for Mother's Day. It was Sarah's first Mother's Day, the twins are nearly 13 weeks old.
Judy returned from her island cruise this week. Sounded pretty cruisy, with tough decisions being which restaurant and which show. The boat had 600 passengers, although one died while visiting an island (not on the ship itself).
I've been watching a talk by Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss on YouTube. It's pretty cool being able to see things like that. My favourite line is where they point out that the difference between the age of the earth and the biblical 6,000 year estimate is like saying that the journey from New York to LA is 7.8 yards. I wonder if the internet could result in a generally better educated population? You could have the best people being lecturers for all students in the world at the same time. Perhaps not.
Our youngest ever convicted murderer, Bailey Junior Kuariki, is now out on bail. Bailey is now a bailee. (sorry, couldn't resist)
The government purchase of the railways prompted breakfast television to come up with the dream team for the board. It included such glitterati as David Benson-Pope (the student basher), Taito Philip Field (the immigration scam minister), and a host of others. It was pretty funny, a list of the Labour Government's embarrassments and failures, an off the cuff thing which deserved a wider audience.
A pub was stolen from south Auckland this week. That's right, a pub was stolen, not burgled. It was a portable pub, obviously a little too portable. The west-coast owners vowed to de-knacker the perpetrators and send the said off cuts to their mums in a lunch box.
We had two retards facing off on a one way bridge down near Queenstown, nobody would back down until the police arrived. So pathetic. Not sure if either was a tourist, but you would suspect they were (not necessarily from overseas, a tourist from outside the area is what I mean).
Big fuss about the New Zealand representative for Miss Universe, a Massey University graduate, when the university displayed a photo of her in a bikini (rather than a gown). Was it that inappropriate? Perhaps. Did it generate publicity, ooooh yes.
A large number a Killer Beez (a local gang) were arrested for manufacture and sale of "P". They had 200k in cash. A replay of an interview with the leader of Killer Beez was shown where he was saying he didn't do drugs, didn't make drugs, didn't sell drugs, and you know he looked like he was lying through his teeth (body language can provide pretty good hints to even a bozo like me, see below for another observation along those lines).
Bit of a fuss about player poaching at high school level again this week. Mt Albert Grammar has been done for two offences. We know they have done it in polo, but that wasn't one of them. Approaching a kid to come to your school so they can play a sport is apparently verboten, but I don't actually see why it should be. A player would be flattered and if the sport is important to them they might want to do it. Why should they not be allowed?
A guy attacked police with a chainsaw. Police hit him with their car. No, they drove it. Would have been cooler if they ripped of the exhaust pipe and slapped him silly with it. After the Tokeroa chainsaw pseudo-massacre, we seem to be favouring the chainsaw as a weapon.
Meanwhile a man took a chainsaw as hand luggage on a plane, because it wasn't in the list of dangerous items (like nail scissors and pocket knives).
WORLD NEWS
The weather in Myanmar seems to have accounted for 22,000 people, the number climbed a couple of times. The regime there seems to be perfect to maximise damage and minimise recovery. Funny how when one person kills another it is murder but when a regime neglects people allowing tens of thousands to die it isn't.
REAL SPORT
Rory's team lost 5-6 in a game they really should have won on Friday night, it was pretty sad. Then Hannah's team, without two of their best three players (see later for why one of them didn't play), lost 0-9 in a game that should have been winnable.
Hannah's soccer team lost 0-2 against a strong team but it could have been better with Hannah playing. Still grading so not the end of the world.
Rory's team won 9-4 against Sacred Heart on Sunday afternoon. Rory scored three for us and one for them (he tried to deflect a shot, but didn't quite work).
Hannah's two school polo teams had games on Sunday but she didn't go (although she was supposed to). Don't know how they went but suspect they struggled.
SPORT
New Zealander Scott Dixon won pole position for the Indy 500, which is pretty cool. Not sure when the race is, possibly this morning.
Only one week of round robin left of Super 14. Teams will make semi-finals, I am sure. Meanwhile, rugby is generally considered to be in trouble as more and more people lose interest.
Last week of premiership this weekend. This is when all the teams play their last game at the same time so nobody knows what they need based on other results. Chelsea needed a win but they drew against Bolton 1-1, Man Utd needed a win and they got a 2-0 win over Wigan. Liverpool beat Spurs 2-0, Middlesbrough beat Man City 8-1 (ouch), Arsenal beat Sunderland 1-0. So Man Utd wins, two points clear of Chelsea, Arsenal third.
MY SAD LIFE
Hannah hurt her right index finger at PE on Monday. Couldn't tell how bad, but she was doing cartwheels at dancing that night (no, don't go there, seriously). She went to get it looked at properly on Tuesday, it was broken but not seriously. The x-ray revealed that there are still growth plates in her bones so she hasn't stopped growing yet. She then went to a variety of people over the next few days (plastic surgeon, hand person, you name it). This included an 8am appointment this morning. She will slowly get back in sport and dancing but goal keeping in polo could be a while off.
It was Ben Grant's birthday on Sunday, he is now four! Mum has her birthday on Wednesday.
Hannah showed me an interesting thing in a TV show she was watching. A woman with quite a large nose was interviewing two people and you could see the female interviewees eyes were going from looking her in the eye to checking out the proboscis, it was pretty funny.
Rory, Maddie, and I worked on rearranging his room, and cleaning as we went. We removed a bit of detritus from my time, recovered some wild socks, plates, and so forth. He now has comfortable seating for six, and he reckons can sleep about 8 in comfort. His definition of comfort is one that I wasn't previously aware of.
Bigger news is that Maddie took Rory off for a hair cut on Saturday (it being an even numbered year and everything). It's a lot shorter but still relatively long. At least he can see in the pool now. And where he is walking, etc.
We had lunch with Granny for Mother's Day. It was Sarah's first Mother's Day, the twins are nearly 13 weeks old.
Judy returned from her island cruise this week. Sounded pretty cruisy, with tough decisions being which restaurant and which show. The boat had 600 passengers, although one died while visiting an island (not on the ship itself).
I've been watching a talk by Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss on YouTube. It's pretty cool being able to see things like that. My favourite line is where they point out that the difference between the age of the earth and the biblical 6,000 year estimate is like saying that the journey from New York to LA is 7.8 yards. I wonder if the internet could result in a generally better educated population? You could have the best people being lecturers for all students in the world at the same time. Perhaps not.
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