Up up and away - almost

Almost away to the "dark continent". Just thinking the other day, we only have two continents yet to visit, South America and Antarctica. Although the second closest to us it is unlikely we would ever go down south. We will be able to watch the Bledisloe Cup game but I understand the World Cup squad will be anounced Sunday so we will be in Oz for that.

Oz and the Netball - we are just not good enough. I hope we are good enough on Saturday night.

Anyway with the trip will be no updates for a while I would presume.

Black Friday

BLACK FRIDAY - Friday the 13 July 2007

Black Friday but had a quiet day and didn't do much. Went to Probus in the morning, tidied up a few personal and Rotary matters (always seems to be some filing to be done) and watched a Korean crime film which was quite good. Unlike the average American hack the killer is never found.

Talking about - or rather typing about - films - we went and saw Pierpoint the other night and enjoyed it. Timothy Spall was excellent. Pierpoint was the last British hangman (carried out 608 executions including at least one innocent in Timothy Evans) and it was interesting that he came out against capital punishment after he resigned. Although I sometimes think they should be shot or something I don't think anybody who thinks it through could favour capital punishment.

Sent an email this week to Radio NZ re Kiwisaver which they read out. The problem with the organisation of the scheme is again with the politicians who changed the details at the last minute. Until this week was unable to find out on the various websites how a person could join if they were not working.

Counting down to our trip and Rhett is counting the days till he goes into the kennels. They had a news item on TV last night about the security measures at airports. They seem to have gone overboard but I suppose if it has to be it has to be. Weather has continued to be lousy but of course not as bad as in the North.

Forty Years On - Decimal Currency 10 July 1967

Forty years on - I can remember it like yesterday. The Bank had just starting moving transactions to computers - a big mainframe - and the main centres had been converted so it was easy for us in Wellington. We were supposed to work the weekend and all Banks were closed for another couple of days to carry out the massive task of converting all records, cheques, cash etc. Thanks to the computer the conversion was easy. So we were able to take a couple of extra days holiday while those who had to do it all manually - mainly in the smaller branches - worked on.

Just heard on Radio NZ that petrol was 8 cents per litre and a pint (a what!!) of milk 4 cents in 1967.

The laptop saga. Hadn't heard anything so rang the Dom and they said they would get back to us which they did. They were surprised so had made contact with the supplier who later phoned from Sydney. It seems it is the fridge saga as explained in the previous blog and it is stilll a couple of weeks away - !!! However, can't complain I suppose as it is for free but you would have thought it would have been ready.

AGM Over and no Lap Top as yet

Well the SeniorNet AGM has finished so I will now be able to get some personal matters more organised. On the computing front we still haven't received the Lap Top so will have to chase that up. A friend once won a fridge and it took 8 months to arrive. Incredibily the firm organising the competition hadn't purchased it beforehand then found that the specific model promised was in short supply !!

Nigeria is not a place anybody would want to visit or work in. With all the kidnappings - and the latest is a kid of 3 - the difficult question at a most stressful time is why would anybody want to go and work there. $$$$ of course must come into it.

Talking about $$$$ I see the Big Mac Index says we are 5% overvalued.

VC(Victoria Cross), AM (Americas Cup) and the bad weekend

THE NEW ZEALAND VICTORIA CROSS

Although a terrible weekend with losses across the Tasman (the All Blacks) and across the World (Spain) we had some good news to break the lousy wet weather with the award of the Victoria Cross. What a great representative Corporal Willy Apiata is for the NZ Army, himself and us - a truly humble hero.

I think the loss in Melbourne is a good reality check but Valencia is another story. I see that our yachting exports now total $600 million and will hit one billion by 2010.

Have not blogged for a few days as busy with the SeniorNet AGM coming up on Wednesday the 4 July - American Independence Day. Once that is over will concentrate on finally getting organised for our trip.

Stress City

Stress - worse than Rugby. What is - the America's Cup.

Race 3 was the most incredible ever although I have to agree with the Swiss that it probably should not have gone ahead as it was indeed just a lottery.

I woke at about 3.55 AM and thought well the race will be over so I will listen to the Radio NZ news at 4AM which I did and it said Team NZ had over a minute lead.

WOW!!

Never wanting to miss a great Kiwi win I turned on the TV. Althought I thought it odd that they were still racing (not knowing about the 2 hour delay to the start) I thought they must be on the last beat. I duly started to watch only to find of course they were only just around the first marker. I then had the stress of watching Alinghi catch up and then pass us.

Grrrr - I was too stressed out so went back to sleep.

But the next morning was the great victory news. Now back to 2 all so it is all on.

I won, NZ won and NZ lost

I won - an HP Notebook computer. I entered a competition - my motto is "You've got to be in to win " - and a friend rang to say he had seen my name in the newspaper as winning a HP Laptop PC as displayed here.

I am not that unlucky although I enter and those who don't win don't enter!!

The All Blacks also won. A good game but not a good performace as far too many errors.

Team NZ - LOST. Doesn't bode well for the races to come but we shall see. At least we made the finals.

Sarah, Joe and Kipp back safely from Vanuatu. Lucky for them that the weather today was reasonable as they left 27-30 degrees behind. When picking them up I updated them on all the past weeks happenings except the winning of the PC for which I held my tongue as Christine didn't think I could. It is funny that I enter a lot of competitions and we were saying only this past week that we hadn't won anything for the past 8-9 months then we won film tickets, 2 days in a motel and visit to a winery and now the laptop.