The Weekender 18/01/2009

Welcome back. Although the official holiday period is over I'm still making the most of the sunny summer time. Yesterday was a trip to a water hole in the Coromandel, next weekend is Parachute Music Festival (so the Weekender will be delayed a day) and then I head to Australia for a break!

Sport

Surfing is obviously the prime summer sport, and Daniel Kereopa from Raglan is making (more of) a name for himself after beating the legend Maz Quinn in the fourth-round heat of the National Surfing champs at Piha.

North Harbour won the NZ Seven's title beating Counties-Manukau 22-17 in Queenstown.

NZ's best women's beach volleyball pair of Anna Scarlett and Susan Blundell won the second round of the national series in Wellington, beating their much higher rated German rivals. Update: they've just won the round at Mt Maunganui as well.

The rain also affected the final ODI against the West Indies but it would have been a fantastic game to watch. Windies captain Chris Gayle was on fire and the Windies got a huge 293 for nine, but NZ came out blazing & while they lost wickets regularly they were regular in getting 12 an over. The rain continued to threaten and was called off after a 15 run over, and NZ were declared the winner of the match and the series (2-1) by 9 runs.
You may remember how well Martin Guptill did in the fourth ODI - his first match. The problem for NZ has never been finding talent like that, it's been having them perform like that more than once. Ross Taylor was one who started well but then almost dropped off the scene. The selector stuck with him and he has pretty much been the batting rock for the last few games. Here's hoping Martin does as well as Ross.

There were two golds for NZ cyclists at the latest track cycling World Cup in Beijing. Jesse Sergent won gold in the men's 4000m individual pursuit and Alison Shanks won the women's 3000m individual pursuit.

NZ News

Telecom has shut down their online shopping competition to Trademe. They made quite a few mistakes with "Ferrit", including bizarre adverts and writing consumer reviews themselves.

The only NZer in the Heineken Open, Dan King-Turner was knocked out in the first round 6-4, 7-5 on Monday. The eventual winner was Juan Martin Del Potro.

A British adventurer Oliver Hicks was banned from using NZ as his base for a round Antarctica trip, but he hasn't been dissuaded by common sense and will leave from Townsville. Unfortunately in the most likely event of him needing to be rescued at some point on his 24,000km 500 day journey, New Zealand tax payers will still need to pay for rescuing him. In his blog he said he was trying to emulate "old fashioned explorers". Although when things went wrong for them, they died.

A rather dim robber was captured this week (with the help of Facebook) after he took his balaclava off because it was too hot trying to break into a safe with grinder. The hidden camera covering the safe got his face, which the police put on Facebook and he was arrested.

Here's a warm fuzzy story for you. An Auckland man, real estate agent Barry Pratt, was on holiday in Hawkes Bay when he got a call that his rare blood type was needed urgently. He drove to Napier and gave blood, which just made it onto a plane to Auckland, for a life saving operation on an unborn baby. The transfusions was performed successfully.

John Key made a few financial announcements this week saying that the economy was near a stand still and expects jobless to reach 7.5% by 2011. However he also said that NZ's economy was in much better shape than Japan, US & Great Britain.

A human rights complaint has been laid against the owners of a cafe in Invercargill, who have refused to serve two Israeli sisters. Apparently as part of their 'protest' on Israel's war. My guess is they aren't also banning Palestinians.

There has been progress on the five kiwis killed in the AirNZ Airbus that crashed off France. Four of the bodies are heading home with 6 of the 7 people on the plane identified. Also on the news update it was mentioned they now know that a power surge caused the accident, causing the plane to climb rapidly and the pilots (the two Germans) lost control.

The Numbers Game

2: $ to use NZ's first "freeflow" toll road opening next week from Orewa to Puhoi
4.6: Richter scale earthquake around the top of the South Island
14: th person to drown since Christmas was a 12 year old girl at Pakiri Beach north of Auckland
25-40: mm of rain accompanied a severe thunderstorm over the top half of NZ this week - and it made all the farmers happy - but not anyone in the path of the golf ball sized hailstones
100: days of action for the new government, actually included 28 days of holiday too
119: kph speeding ticket for a Invercargill forklift with a top speed of 19kph may well have been a case of mistaken identity!
188: minutes of TV watching was the average for NZers in 2008 (over three hours) up 8.6%
580: customers were without power in Auckland's CBD for an hour
6,180: cu m of sand has been placed on Auckland beaches to "resand" them
40,000: (almost) people went to the Big Day Out at Mount Smart Stadium this year
81,500: people tuned in to see Australia being beaten by South Africa in the first test - more than watched any of the NZ vs Windies tests
500k: $ of aid for Fiji after huge flooding which killed at least seven and has left thousands homeless
10m: $ worth of "P" could be made from a tonne of highly toxic liquid chemical stolen from Mt Maunganui

Finance NZ Dollar

GBP 0.3707 (-0.0187)
EUR 0.4116 (-0.0203)
USD 0.5463 (-0.0429)
AUD 0.8114 (-0.0223)

The Weekender NZer of the week

Robert Dickie
CHAMPION OF AUTOMATION
RJ Dickie invented and patented the world's first stamp vending machine. His machines were in use for 50 years, 18,000 were used in Britain, with countless others around the world. The machine that won highest honours at the 1909 Seattle Expo came from a New Zealander with a single idea.
http://www.nzedge.co.nz/heroes/dickie.html

Joke of the Weekender

Bike Training
Never having learned to ride a bicycle as a child, I finally decided to do it in my late twenties. My boyfriend, William, offered to teach me, and we headed to the park for my first lesson. He held on to the seat as I wobbled down a path. My self-consciousness was just beginning to disappear when I saw a father, teaching his little daughter to ride a bike, approaching.
As we passed, I was mortified when William said to the dad, "They grow up so fast, don't they?"

Weekender Photos

This week I've got a couple of photos of the waterhole, and also a sunset with a storm backdrop out my front door in another album.
Check out my photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/dunwich42/Waterhole#

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