The Weekender 07/12/2008

And then it was December. I knew it had been quite warm & hot, but I was surprised that this week Hamilton announced water restrictions (just times for sprinklers - but still...). Farmers on the East Coast (especially Hawkes Bay area) are preparing to return to drought conditions.

Sport

In rugby, one of the All Blacks assistant coaches Wayne Smith has rejected an offer from Wales to continue with his All Blacks role.
Andrew Hore has won the top prize in the NZ rugby awards, beating off Ritchie McCaw and Piri Weepu.
The rankings for the Rugby World Cup 2011 have been made and the southern hemisphere has claimed the top four spots. New Zealand, South Africa, Australia and Argentina are followed by Wales, England, France & Ireland, then Scotland Fiji, Italy & Tonga.
The final game rugby of the season was a memorial game between the Wallabies and the Barbarians to commemorate Australia's rugby gold medal in the 1908 London Olympics. It was a close fight and Australia won 18-11.

For reasons of completeness only, the Black Caps lost the second test to Australia by an innings and 62 runs. Everyone is hoping they will do better against the West Indies and also with a new coach. The loss dropped NZ to 8th - their lowest ranking.

The Black Sox men's softball team, won the Parana International in Argentina when they beat Argentina 3-1 in the final.

David Beckham and his LA Galaxy team have been back in New Zealand. This time the game was in Auckland and it seems the public wasn't quite as willing to get behind them as they were in Wellington, but I think in the end the crowd turned up and it all went well. David was saying all the right things in the interviews and the LA Galaxy ended up winning the football match 3-0 against the Oceania All Stars.

Paige Hareb is one woman surfer to watch. She has become the first NZer to make the pro women's surfing tour. She will join an elite group of 18 women competing in the $US1m world champ series.

NZ advanced to the quarter finals of the women's world teams squash champs in Egypt with a 3-0 win over Ireland.

Kiwi golfer Tim Wilkinson didn't finish quite so well but he put a strong showing in the Australian PGA this week. At one point he was the overnight leader.

The Breakers lost their top of the table spot when they put on a poor performance and lost to the Townsville Crocodiles on Thursday night. They were well beaten. Although they have been doing very well, they still have bad nights.

The Wellington Phoenix couldn't extend their winning run. They were thoroughly out played by Adelaide United in a 6-1 loss.

In the latest round of the World Sevens rugby series - this time in South Africa, NZ finished top of their pool and made it through to the final against South Africa, but ran out of time and lost 12-7.

Jamie Whincup has won the first race of the final round of the Aussie V8 champs (I refuse to call them supercars). It was the Ford drivers first title win.
Clearly his season was better than this shot I took at the Hamilton 400 http://picasaweb.google.com/dunwich42/Hamilton400#5191274946041848914
Mark Skaife has retired - I only mention him because of his great wisdom in partnering with Jim Richards in the glory days of the Godzilla's (Nissan Skyline GTRs).

The rowing race of the month was a rematch between Olympic gold medalist Olaf Tufte and NZ's three times world champ Mahe Drysdale, who of course was unwell for the Olympic final, fading from first to third. The race was the Billy Webb centennial challenge at Wanganui. To find the third person there was a wild card race on Friday which Hamish Bond won. In the end after a close race between the two main rivals, Olaf Tufte won again, with Hamish Bond well back.

NZ News

Labour left a nasty surprise for National. It seems that the ACC budget is going to be blown out by $1b. Apparently Labour officials knew about it but "someone else" decided not to include it in the official reports they gave when they 'opened the books'.
National didn't handle their first crisis so well, when there were 200 NZers stuck in Thailand unable to get home due to the problems there. Things weren't made easy for them with the Air Force's two Boeing 757's sitting in Alabama for a 16-month revamp.
Labour's new MP for Mangere is angry he can't be sworn into Parliament in Samoan. He must have forgotten that Samoan is not one of New Zealand's official languages.

The families of those killed in the crash of the Air NZ airbus all arrived in France early this week. They have all gone out by boat to where the plane went down and they have also had a memorial service. The investigators can not yet explain what caused the plane to nosedive into the sea.

There was an unfortunate end to a difficult rescue this week. Two Japanese trampers had attempted a climb of Mount Cook, but got stranded. Unfortunately the weather was so bad that rescuers couldn't get to them for three or four days. They did drop supplies but the trampers didn't realise - even though it was a perfect drop, right beside the tent. On Friday when the rescue chopper went up to get them, the tent had blown away and they only found one man. They found out later the other had died a few hours before.

The Flight of the Conchords' album Flight of the Conchords has been nominated for a US Grammy for the best comedy album of the year.

Last week I noted the Otago District Health Board chief information officer that was supposedly defrauding to the tune of $6m (this story says $16.9m!). This week was his trial and he was found guilty. So perhaps there is a bunch of information that wasn't public and he may well be guilty, but for the record it's easy to spend lots of money doing things properly for a large computer system. Just because an IT manager spends money and you can't "see" anything for it, doesn't necessarily mean there was fraud (or incompetence).

In a previous Weekender I briefly mentioned how NZers were able to distinguish the meaning of "kiwi" based on it's context. It may be a strange thing to ponder, but ponder it I have. And this week I came to a stunning realisation. NZers actually do that with everything. I have heard discussions by foreigners in NZ (mostly English), complaining about how we don't pronounce words properly, whether it is hair, here, or hare or one of the other numerous options that English throws us. It seems that NZers pronunciation (or lack thereof) confuses (some!) foreigners or even people who just speak properly.
But here is the catch. I realised that we have the incredible talent to understand exactly what people are talking about based entirely on context, while others are left conversationally floundering (actual floundering would require a lantern, a mud flat and some kind of spear). I personally think it's quite a good skill to have. Actually reminds me. NZers also interchange "zero" an "oh" in numbers. It was years ago that I first noticed how an American I was talking to got completely confused when I read a number as "seven, three, oh, five". Since then I tend to explicitly say "zero", but for NZers it just doesn't matter. Yah for context!

The Numbers Game

10: months jail time for a repeat tagger in Whangarei
40: year old unemployed man Craig Blair robbed Te Puke bank so he could go back to prison
87: year old great-grandmother who thought it wasn't too late has just earned a degree in anthropology from Massey Uni
500: people marched through Opotiki this week to protest against increasing violence following the death of local retired school teacher John Rowe
118,800: viewers for the All Blacks final grand slam game - indicating to rugby bosses that people are sick of watching rugby!
300m: $ haul of cannabis found & destroyed by Police during the 2007 to 2008 growing season - the largest haul in five years

Finance NZ Dollar

GBP 0.3621 (+0.0055)
EUR 0.4186 (-0.0133)
USD 0.5325 (-0.0159)
AUD 0.8240 (-0.0121)

The Weekender NZer of the week

Are we allowed two? Our two NZers of the week are the NZ Herald New Zealanders of the year.
They are Austin Hemmings and Tony McClean.
Tony McClean was the Elim Christian College teacher who died along with six students in a canyoning disaster.
Austin Hemmings died when he was stabbed while trying to help a women. Their full stories along with all the other nominees are linked below.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid;=10546746&ref;=rss
Or head to nzherald.co.nz and search for "New Zealanders of the year"

Joke of the Weekender

Argument Settled
The other day, Avril and I got into some petty argument. (I say it was petty. She would have said it was Armageddon.) As is our nature, neither of us would admit the possibility that we might be in error.
To her credit, Avril finally said, "Look. I'll tell you what. I'll admit I'm wrong if you admit I was right."
"Fine." I said.
She took a deep breath, looked me in the eye and said, "I'm wrong."
I grinned and replied, "You're right."

Weekender Photos

Check out my photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/dunwich42

Darren Harrison: darren@harrison.gen.nz
The Weekender: mailed weekly (Sunday nightish)
Website: www.dunwich.co.nz/weekender/
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