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)

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