The Weekender 15/02/2009

Welcome back, I've had a rather busy week at work so it will be interesting to see what happened!

Sport

With the sport news so busy last week, I skipped the info on the yachting - and now it's all over! With the proper America's Cup taking so long to get sorted out in the courts, NZ decided something needed to be done and provided two equal boats and invited everyone to Auckland for the "Louis Vuitton Pacific yachting regatta". Lots of teams planning for the America's Cup agreed to come and it went well, although there was talk of a few court appeals (& a no-show by Alinghi) despite being nick-named 'the friendly regatta'. So this week was the final week of the regatta. In earlier races, Team New Zealand had been fairly dominant but were beaten by Britain's Team Origin & Damiani Italia later in the series. The new team Italia Challenge beat Luna Rossa. Team Origin were knocked out by Damiani Italia in a shock result, and Oracle knocked out Luna Rossa. Then Alinghi beat Oracle to join Team NZ in the final (who had previous qualified with the previous good results). Friday's racing saw Alinghi beat Team NZ by 22 seconds before racing was abandoned due to high wind. On Saturday Team NZ won three races to win the best of 5 final.

The cricket series in Australia has been compelling - perhaps mainly because I was lucky enough to go to NZ's best game - the second ODI in Melbourne. Australia came back though, and in the third game set a fairly high target of 302. NZ's top order didn't do too well again and we were all out with Australia winning by 32 runs. The fourth game saw Australia win by 6 wickets and set up an interesting decider. But the weather didn't play ball and it was raining heavily most of the day. They did start though with the game reduced to 22 overs. Australia got to 168 and NZ lost lots of wickets but seemed to stabilise with 6 wickets down and Martin Guptil on fire (64 off 34!). But then when it looked possible we might win, the rain started again and the game was abandoned. Since Australia were defending the Chappel-Hadlee title and the series was drawn, Australia retained the trophy. A good chance for NZ to beat Australia at home goes begging. The only good news is that Daniel Vettori has returned to the No.1 spot in the world cricket one-day bowling rankings, with Kyle Mills third! Ross Taylor is up to 16th for batsmen.

Sean Marks got himself an NBA career-high record of 18 points for his New Orleans Hornets team this week. The Breakers finally stopped their run of loses with a 103-69 win over the Cairns Taipans, and that win finally secures them a home game for the semi-finals. They also had a 97-107 win over Sydney Spirit.

Nick Willis continues to run well and beat a talented field in the mile race at Boston Indoor Games for a personal best of 3min 53.54 sec.

After doing not so well at the Olympics the NZ men's hockey team beat the World and Olympic champs Germany to finish third place of the four-team event (along with European champs Netherlands and India).

The Warriors had a good pre-season first up game, beating the Melbourne Storm 24-12 at Waikato Stadium. Apparently Stacey Jones had a good game!

You'll never guess what! The Super 14 has started. The Highlanders almost won, but the ACT Brumbies kicked a drop goal in the final minute to win 31-33. The Hurricanes almost won with a good fight back but lost 26-22 to the Waratahs. The Chiefs almost won but the Crusaders were too strong winning 19-13.
The Bulls beat the Reds 33-20

NZ News

The biggest story of the week by far, continues to be Australia's bush fires. It has been horrific and there are stories from all sorts of sources. Although NZ has also been on high alert for fire danger, the offer was immediately made of 100 fire fighters, and a group of forensic police have also gone over. I think the most amazing story I heard was an interview introduced as "one man who has lost everything except his perspective". He said "yeah mate, I've lost everything I owned, but my neighbour over there, he lost his kids". I think that's not a bad perspective to have, possessions become irrelevant when push comes to shove. The government also kick started the Red Cross bushfire fund with a $500,000 donation. By Thursday the NZ public had added $579,000.

John Key continues to stop silly spending by cancelling a $400,000 upgrade to the soft furnishings at his provided house in Wellington, and he has also asked for a review on a $47m refurbishment of the Governor-General's residence.

The Numbers Game

1: # cheesiest headline ever about butter prices not dropping: "Butter price refuses to melt"
2: completely different sets of weather conditions for NZ for most of last week, South Island freezing (13degC max in Timaru) and the North Island sweltering (32degC in Napier)
3: c/L drop in petrol prices - I'm sure the petrol companies are just playing with us all
3: capuchin monkeys born in Hamilton zoo in the past 3 weeks with two more on the way
8.3: % drop in house prices in 12 months to January
12.50: $ minimum wage after a 50c increase, which will affect around 120,000 workers
32.4: degC for Auckland - the hottest day on record
60: % drop in Telecom profits, poor people - that's only $162m profit!
100: th birthday present for Rupert Murdoch's mum, he gave her a sculpture from NZ
100: % humidity in Auckland overnight and a minimum of 23degC made it feel like 32degC (minimum! in Auckland!)
349: drivers were caught speeding near schools
500,000: $ bill for fighting the huge (by NZ's standards) fire on the Mahia peninsular

Finance NZ Dollar

GBP 0.3638 (+0.0047)
EUR 0.4060 (-0.0044)
USD 0.5224 (-0.0089)
AUD 0.7950 (+0.0089)

The Weekender NZer of the week

Sir Keith Park.
Anyone who hangs around me long enough will hear me at some point talk about Sir Keith Park's pivotal role in World War 2. Peter Jackson has joined a campaign to get Sir Keith permanently honoured in London.
For goodness sake, the German's called him the "defender of London". RAF Marshal Lord Tedder said: "If ever any one man won the Battle of Britain, he did. I don't believe it is realised how much that one man, with his leadership, his calm judgment and his skill, did to save not only this country, but the world."
http://www.sirkeithpark.com/
Or search for "sir keith park" on Facebook.

Joke of the Weekender

Marrying Young
My sister, went to the department store to check out the bridal registry of our niece whose wedding was coming up soon. When my sister returned from the store, she tossed the gift list on a table and declared, "I think she's too young to get married."
"Why do you say that?" I asked.
"Because," she said, "they've registered for Nintendo games."

Weekender Photos

I have finally put up my photos from my great holiday in Melbourne, if you look around there are also photos from Parachute 09!
Check out my photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/dunwich42/Melbourne09

Darren Harrison: darren@harrison.gen.nz
The Weekender: mailed weekly (Sunday nightish)
Website: www.dunwich.co.nz/weekender/
{If these just fill up your junk mail, then send me an email & I'll take you off the list | The Weekender is not a verified news source, sometimes it's even just an opinion}