Bar flies...

The quiz last night was a marked improvement. We finished only a few points off the top, but still out of the prize money. There were 9 of us in total, so that may explain the upturn in fortunes.

My personal highlights were...

A poker question - asking what 'heads up' meant in a casino.

And there was a question about a song, and the film it came from - the answer being Two Weeks Notice (pretty embarrassed about knowing that one). All those hours put in watching romcoms has paid off.

A lowlight was getting this wrong...

Which country's flag is this?



I said Guernsey at a guess. In hindsight, not a good guess as Guernsey isn't a country. Si had another answer (the correct one as it happens), but I thought I'd seen that flag many a time before, and never noticed a hand print in the middle of it. You live and learn.

The best thing about the night though was seeing an advert for a weekly poker night in the same pub. I did some e-digging today and found a bit more info, needless to say I'll be there pretty much every week. Especially as it soon to be our local (more on that soon)...

Jack Daniels National Pub Poker League

Texas Hold'em poker tournaments are starting at The Kingslander on Monday 11th September.

Registration is at 6pm with games starting at 7pm. Get in quick, there are limited seats available!

Bar and sponsor prizes on the night - and - the chance to participate in regional and national events!

Come and give it a shot, try out your best poker face!

A sad end...

Greenhithe's season came to an end today with defeat in the Plate Final.

The game started at a fair old pace and Greenhithe raced into a 3-0 deficit. Some good wing play by the Zamantics, erm, winger led to a few floated crosses which caused havoc for the unchallenged keeper.

However, we were soon back in the game as Pete sent me through on goal and I hit it across the keeper into the far corner. I'm normally quite self-deprecating (ahem) when it comes to describing goals, but this was a GREAT finish - straight as a laser into the corner.

Pete then scored a penalty to take us in at half time 3-2 down. Things didn't start well in the second half as we conceded another sloppy goal to go further behind. We got back to 4-3 with another goal from Pete. It was a tap in from a corner, a corner won when the keeper tipped a shot of mine round the post (sadly my only other effort on target in the game).

In the final 20 minutes we had a volley of mine just wide, a free kick just over, a shot of Pete's just wide, a one-on-one saved and with the very last touch of the game, a flicked header that fell just the wrong side of the post.

Very disappointing. Also, Si and Leanne didn't realise my camera was in my stuff so there's no footage either.

So it's close season now - and only 7 months to wait until it all kicks off again.

Shooting some b-ball outside of the school...

I've been watching a bit of the basketball world championships from Japan. It's quite big here as the Tall Blacks finished 4th 4 years ago. I'm not so keen on them doing the haka before each game though. Fair enough when it's the rugby and the likes of Piri Weepu...




but when it's a baggy shorts wearing Peter Crouch lookalike doing it, well it just doesn't have the same effect.

By the way, I'm 29 years old and still snigger when I hear the name Weepu. Oh dear.

Privates on parade...

Today was a special day in Auckland, it was the Boobs on Bikes Parade. Topless pornstars on the back of motorbikes and tanks paraded down the main street in the centre, Queen Street, all for a noble cause. Or so I thought. It was in fact to promote the Erotica Expo that takes place this weekend.

I think Bradbury will be back in England by now - not good timing on his part. Unlucky.

I work at the top of the hill above Queen St and due to my still ill state (8 days and counting...what the hell?) I couldn't be bothered walking all the way there to stand at the back of 20000 onlookers, but I was treated to my own personal viewing as a few of them must have broken away from the main pack and rode right by, waving as they went.

I didn't have my camera on me though. I did have my phone, but only remembered an hour later that it has a camera on it. Idiot.

Here's a link to the story. Feel free to google away for more extensive pictures.

Woe is me...

My weekend has been very dull indeed. I haven't left the house, and the reason for this...I've been ill! This is the first time in 18 months that I've been sick, despite what my employment records may show.

Not sure what's caused it but I've been totally wiped out - run down, cold sore (for the first time ever) and swollen glands. This is not good when I'm on the other side of the world to my mum. I've had to look after myself. (violins)

I suppose I have been burning the candles at both ends of late, so I'm off the booze now until the weekend after next. Then I'll probably be back in the old routine culminating in the next breakdown some time in 2008.

EDIT: It must be stress of some sort, earlier on this week I had the dream I only have when stressed - there's about 5 minutes to go before my french lesson and I haven't prepared the next chapter in the book we're studying.

Thanks for that Mrs Browning - 12 years on and I'm still having nightmares.

NZ in mourning...

The Maori Queen, Dame Te Atairangikaahu, died today after a long illness.

Didn't know her personally but I'm sure she was a top bird.

This week's brainteaser...

It was a very tough quiz last night. My favourite question was this one - As the crow flies, which city is nearest to London....Madrid or Berlin?

My main reason for liking this question is the map I drew to make sure of the answer...

Sunday, ruddy Sunday

Yesterday started well as I read of Oldham's first goal and points of the new season. I then dragged myself out of bed to go to the Business Opportunity and Franchise Expo at the Showgrounds.

Quite interesting - got free sweets at the candy dispensing machine franchise stall, a free cookie at the Cookie Time stall, and more sweets when I successfully passed a rugby ball through a hole (to be fair, I threw it more NFL style than Tri Nations) at the ANZ stall. It didn't even touch the sides.

I spoke to several franchises, some sounded bad, some sounded too much like get-rich-quick and some definitely got my interest. Plenty to think about anyway.

There were also seminars which I would have loved to have stuck around for but I needed to get back ahead of the big game.

The pitch was again awful, probably worse than last week and it felt like you were running through quick sand most of the time. We dominated pretty much the whole of the game, and should have won by a big margin. But some wayward crossing/passing/finishing (not all by me) meant it was fairly close. We ended up winning 4-2 to progress to the Plate Final in 2 weeks time. All 4 goals were scored by my strike partner and here are the other incidents of note from the game:

* Before kick off the ref demanded everyone tucked their shirts in (Dad - you'd have been very pleased with that)
* Rob getting very deliberately stamped on (in his nasty place) by a guy who he'd slide tackled (fairly) twice in quick succession. Ref's verdict - free kick to them.
* Our keeper breaking the 6 second rule by around 3/10ths of a second. Ref's verdict - was ridiculous.
* At one of their corners an attacker punched on of our defenders on the ear, knocking him off his feet. Ref's verdict - red card. Couldn't not do really.
* Players swearing a lot. Ref's verdict - yellow card to the next person who swears. Which he didn't actually do.
* My leg being landed on by a falling 7ft, 20 stone Chris Kamara lookalike - and me surprisingly not being injured.
* Me getting substituted with 20 minutes to go as I "was looking a bit tired". My verdict - RUBBISH, I was actually doing more running in the second half. I wasn't best pleased as it was only 2-1 at the time and they'd just hit the post twice. I'm not bitter though, I only whinged about it for about 5 hours afterwards. And then again a little bit now.

But it's a team game, and we won. May even be able to get a bit more video footage of the final. Excited?

The evening ended with me picking up Si and Leanne from the airport. They'd been on holiday in Australia for 2 weeks and although it's great to have them back, I'm going to miss their car which I had on loan whilst they were away.

Birthday barn bash

James has organised a barn night for his birthday celebrations. People normally use these barns to rest their weary legs after a days hiking through the countryside. Not us - we stock it full of booze and have a massive piss up.

This is one of the very few occasions I've wished I was back in England. Have a good time folks.

Here's the best photo of any barn night... Dunc showing us what its all about...

When scanning through my old pictures to find a good way of summing up what goes on at a barn weekend, this one of Joe was a very close second.

Notices

Happy Birthday James Creegan (for last Thursday)

As a tribute here's a clip from my visit to Korea. Me and James are singing a Take That song only a smidgen worse than Howard Donald....

Back to student life

Got a text yesterday afternoon from Dave, Rob's brother, as he was out in town. Dave's a student so I met up with him and a few of his mates in Shadows - Auckland University's students union bar.

As I walked in I was hit with a smell I hadn't encountered for a few years...those of you who sampled the Leek Road side bar and, to a lesser extent, the Venue in Manchester will know exactly what I'm talking about.

But the booze was cheap - $6.50 for a jug of Tui and not much more for vodka and redbulls. Ended up staying there till after midnight and me and Dave pretty much owned the pool table. I think the only games we lost were where I went in-off whilst potting the black (this happened 3 times).

Flaming great night out though, and not too late either for a change. However, the rest of the weekend will be devoted to getting my fitness spot on for the big game tomorrow. Or, in other words, lying on the sofa watching telly.

Launch party

Kat's big night was this Wednesday, she had her launch party for the new jewellery brand, complete with girls in nurses outfits, local celebs and free cocktails. She did a grand job and should make the main newspaper's About Town supplement.

The after show party took place in the Pony Club, a small venue in the bowels of Showgirls - Auckland's biggest strip joint. Not as seedy as it sounds though, the DJ even played me a Charlatans track. She had a good style actually - spin a tune, then race to the dancefloor for the duration, then go back and put the next one on.

Here's Kat looking not too impressed with my dancefloor moves...

Mixing with the stars

Kat had quite the VIP guest list - here she is with the last but one Miss New Zealand...

In ice

Here are a few pieces entombed in ice. These buggers took 3 days to thaw out in the garden...

Quiz

Mid table again. The victory went to a team consisting of 15 members. Well done, you can be very proud. And I'm sure you'll really enjoy the $5 each bar tab. Will just about buy them a small lemonade each.

Madfury

I had a visitor on Sunday evening....




Mr Stuart Bradbury and his girlfriend Claire. Claire is over here for a while on midwifery matters and Stu has come over for a 2 week holiday. Spectacular weather greeted them so they came round to our place and had a few drinks. We even got a roaring log fire going on. It was interesting to catch up on what Watson Wyatt life is like these days. Say no more.

For those of you who know Stu it will come as no surprise that he randomly lowered the tone of the conversation in some style. I'd pre-warned Rob of his ability to do this and he didn't disappoint. From a normal subject topic he somehow went off on a tangent about the unkempt state of 19th century women. When questioned about his knowledge of this subject he replied with "well put it this way, I wouldn't expect to see any lightening bolts".

Classic.

Football latest

It's been a hectic few days and I've finally got a quite night for an update. Lets go back to last Sunday....

The final league game of the season took place in torrential rain that had been pretty much continuous for 48 hours. The only word suitable to describe the pitch is quagmire. Anyone who's played football in those conditions will know that it's great fun. We were playing top of the table for the 2nd time in 3 weeks as it was a rearranged game from earlier in the season.

We did very well to take an early lead and hold on to it for most of the half until one of the dodgiest goals you're ever likely to see brought them back into the game. After some tricky wing play the ball was cut back from the by line, however are entire defence had stopped playing as the ball was about a yard over the line. The linesman didn't raise his flag and the goal stood. Things got a bit heated naturally. The main problem is that although the refs are provided by the association, the lines are usually run by one sub from each team. Funnily enough it was their sub that didn't give the ball out. Still, our fault for not playing to the whistle.

The same linesman also gave me offside in the 2nd half. It was still 1-1 and I would have been clean through - I was watching the line and was DEFINITELY on. I turned round and gave him a piece of my mind. The air turned pretty blue for a while (I'm not proud of it, swearing isn't big and it isn't clever but it was in the heat of the moment!) and the lino told the ref he didn't want to do it any more. So they swapped him out. Result.

However, he later came on and scored one of their goals as they won 3-1. Not such a good result.

So Greenhithe's final record looks like this:
P W D L F A Df Pts
GREENHITHE 1 14 3 2 9 34 44 -10 8
with 3 points deducted for messing up a team sheet.

In the 8 games since me and Rob started the record is P8 W3 D1 L4 F22 (of which me and Rob have got 10) A19 Pts 10


Roll on this Sunday when Greenhithe take on Waitakare Rangers in the Plate semi finals...

New job (again)...

So I'm 2 days into my new job and things are much better...

PROS (I'm ignoring the fact that I don't like working in offices)

* Bright, open plan office, windows and aircon.

* Clean traps.

* Full email and internet access - majorly important as the odd couple of minutes every 2 hours or so definitely makes me work more productively for the rest of the time. Fact. Honest.

* My desk backs on to a wall so no one can see what I'm doing - you know, all the hard work and such like.

* The girls on my desk are nice and friendly - conversation topics to date have included fizzy haribos, skiing, quality english pubs and jaffa cakes.

* I can walk to work and back - about 45 minutes per trip. Saves me $6 per day and gets me active before and after 8 hours on my backside.

* The job itself is fairly complex, reasonably challenging and fortunately not data entry. It also includes talking to other humans which is a bonus.

* Pay is good, so I can have a decent life over the next few months whilst simultaneously saving for the big aussie trip.

* Regular morning teas apparently, which consist of, if today is the benchmark, sausage rolls, mini pies, scones, muffins and chocolate cake.

* Free ice cream every other Friday afternoon.

* Dress down Fridays.

* Incredibly fit receptionist.

* I don't get called Oven.

CONS

* I don't get called Oven.

Fame at last

So I googled ARCTIC MONKEYS AUCKLAND SET LIST yesterday and this very site was the 5th one on the list.

Not bad that eh?

Quiz time...

Better late than never. Been a fairly busy week but here are a selection of questions from Tuesdays quiz. We had a couple of new team members and finished 9th - a big improvement on the week before.

Most answers right gets a special prize...an embarrassing picture of a person of your choice posted on my site (not me).

1. When was the Beatles' last live performance? (The studio rooftop one)

2. Who composed the music to Jaws and Star Wars?

3. Germany's most northern land border is with which country?

4. What's the maximum number of riders on a Tour de France team?

5. The fashion label Kookai was born in which country?

And here's the special double points bonus question....

Who played Egon in Ghostbusters?