The Weekender 19/04/2009

Welcome to the Hamilton 400 weekend!

Sport

On to Super 14. The Blues have kept their semi hopes alive and dented those of the Highlanders with a 26-6 win over the southerners. The Brumbies beat the Bulls 32-31 with a try in the last three minutes, the Hurricanes beat the Stormers 34-11, and the Force had a deserved 14-15 win over the Waratahs. The Crusaders welcomed back Richie McCaw to upset the Sharks 10-13 and the Chiefs jumped to the top of the table (!!! - temporarily) beating the Cheetahs 10-28 at the start of their South African tour. And the Reds were beaten 20-31 by the Lions.
Table: (* 10 games, 9 for other teams) Sharks* 32, Chiefs 31, Bulls/Hurricanes 29, Blues/Waratahs 28, Brumbies 27, Crusaders 26, Force/Highlanders 22, Lions 19, Stormers 15, Reds 13, Cheetahs 7.

Well the Hamilton 400 is finished for another year, and I went along today for the fun. This year the event was set up as two separate 200km races, one on Saturday & one on Sunday, each with their own qualifying. Jamie Whincup won both of the races for Ford - something very very unusual as most Aussie V8 races have been won by Holden for the past 10 years. Today Steven Johnson secured pole position after the qualifying session was effectively ended early by a crash by Tim Slade in his Holden. The crash resulted in Ford having all but two of the top 10 spots and relegated the Holden HRT team well down the grid when they didn't have time for their 'flying lap'. Fabian Coulthard was the first kiwi home in fifth, and Greg Murphy finished eighth (after crashing out yesterday).

The Warriors finally had some good news after a Stacey Jones field goal gave them a 17-16 golden point win over the Sydney City Roosters today.

The NZ Northern No1 team has won the Australasian under-17 badminton title in Ballarat.

NZ & number one amateur golfer Danny Lee has turned pro with a deal believed to be worth about US$10m.

Ben Griffin, NZ's No1 ranked alpine ski racer, has claimed a second in the FIS Super G race in France.

The British adventurer hoping to row around Antarctica has quit after not making anywhere near the distance that he needed to, to reach a safe winter harbour.

NZ News

The police have done it again and nabbed a woman who try to avoid the police by making a false 111 emergency call. Police responded to a noise complaint and found a women with some friends in a car park & over the legal limit, but she said she was going to get a taxi home. Moments later a 111 call reported masked & armed men raiding a petrol station 500m away. The women and a man took off in their car when police responded to the call, but a police office had a hunch & located the pair. Then he had someone dial the phone that made the 111 call - and the women's phone rang. She then admitted her actions.

NZers have been told to 'think twice' about travelling to Fiji after the recent political problems there. TV3 staff have been deported, and now local media are being censored with no political coverage. This was prompted by the Fijian Court of Appeal ruling the current regime was illegal. In response the president sacked the judges, dissolved the constitution and ruled out an election for five years.

The Navy has finally received the first of four inshore patrol vessels that it has been waiting for, for two years. The remaining three should be arriving shortly.

The Numbers Game

3.2: % drop in vehicle retail sales for February, hitting an eight year low
6: people (at least) died over Easter on the roads
25: people arrested over Friday night in Hamilton - fewer than the average of 28, being attributed to the "mature crowed attending the Hamilton 400"
45: % of NZers leave annual holidays untaken - although the reason in half of those cases is to carry the holidays over for the next year - there's nothing like a long long holiday
75: % of ASB workers have had their pay frozen - all those earning more than $50,000
211: km/h by two motorcyclists caught by police were on a 'coffee run' to Kaikoura
10,111: speed camera tickets for the busiest camera in the country in Brown's Bay Auckland, the next busiest cameras are Manurewa, Glendene, & South Auckland
38,000: people for just the Friday practise day at the Hamilton 400, a full house of 60,000 today and a total of 170,000
30m: $ being spent for an NZ exhibit at the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai

Finance NZ Dollar

GBP 0.3832 (-0.0137)
EUR 0.4347 (-0.0070)
USD 0.5673 (-0.0153)
AUD 0.7847 (-0.0247)

The Weekender NZer of the week

Peter Jackson
(I watched the three Lord of the Rings movies on Saturday last weekend - a great reminder of the still amazing work done by Peter)

MADE IN NEW ZEALAND
NZEdge presents a personal account of the Peter Jackson story by filmmaker Costa Botes (written May 2002). His account of Jackson's journey is a steadfastly idiosyncratic case study of innovation, focus and energy from the edge. "In giving himself something to watch, Peter Jackson has given the rest of us good cause to shake off complacency and start thinking about how to realise a few other 'impossible' goals."
http://www.nzedge.co.nz/heroes/jackson.html

Joke of the Weekender

Hospital Regulations
Hospital regulations require a wheelchair for patients being discharged. However, while working as a student nurse, I found one elderly gentleman--already dressed and sitting on the bed with a suitcase at his feet--who insisted he didn't need my help to leave the hospital.
After a chat about rules being rules, he reluctantly let me wheel him to the elevator. On the way down I asked him if his wife was meeting him.
"I don't know," he said. "She's still upstairs in the bathroom changing out of her hospital gown."

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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