It's Cold!

We've lived in Australia for just over a year, and it seems we've become acclimatised already.

Today was cold - 17 degrees. The heater's cranked up tonight, as it's supposed to get down to around 5 or 6 degrees.

Coming from Dunedin it seems really odd - 17 degrees would be more than you could hope for at this time of year! 5 or 6 would usually be the high!

The Greatest Day in NZ Sport?

Yesterday was perhaps the greatest day of all time in New Zealand sport - at least it's the greatest day in a long time. Kiwi's quickly jump all over their sports stars when they don't perform, so I thought I would recognise the great achievements of Saturday 16th August 2008.

Firstly, New Zealand won 5 Olympic medals in one day for the first time ever - 2 gold (1st Olympic gold in track and field in over 30 years), 1 silver and two bronze. It's certainly our greatest ever Olympic day.

While in South Africa, the All Blacks kept the Springboks scoreless in a test at home for the first time ever. It's hard enough winning in SA, without even considering keeping them scoreless.

And to top it off the New Zealand Warriors had a win in the NRL propelling them into finals contention.

I can't think of too many other days that would rate higher in NZ sport! It's a great day to be a kiwi!

Day 6 - Still No Medals

Today marks day 6 of the Beijing Olympics, and New Zealand still has no medals.

I've just been looking at the medal table, and even Kazakhstan has more medals than New Zealand.
Even countries I haven't heard of (is Kyrgyzstan even a real country?!?!?) have won medals!

I wonder what the TAB is paying for NZ athletes winning nothing at all?

Makes me wonder how long the NZ government can continue to pour millions into these constantly under performing sports.

My First Vent - Vodafone 3G Wireless Broadband

I've decided to use my blog as an outlet to vent my frustration of bad service, bad products or just anything that pisses me off.

The first company on my target list is Vodafone Australia.

Earlier this year when we moved house, we found that Telstra (maybe they should be my first vent???) had removed the phone connection from the house and required $299 to reinstall it.

I wasn't too happy about having to pay that as you can imagine, so I decided to investigate wireless. I found that Vodafone Australia offer a 3G Wireless connection, where you get 5 gig of data for $39.95 per month, with speeds of up to 1.5 megabits.

So I signed up for a 24 month contract. All sounds pretty good. But the problem is, that like me, thousands of people signed up for the same deal. So what should be broadband speeds, turned out to be less than dial up for 3 times the price. And there are also frequent disconnections (I'm talking 15 - 20 per evening).

And don't even talk about their help desk service where a computer named Lara can't understand what you are talking about.

So if you are thinking wireless broadband, don't think Vodafone!

How Will They Cope?

Last week Telecom New Zealand announced their annual operating profit fell 15.5% for the last financial year.

Apparently they made a disappointing $NZ713,000,000.

However will they cope with only making three quarters of a billion dollars? I guess they'll have to overcharge even more.

The (Rugby) Boot's on the Other Foot

Recent news reports suggest that Rugby League in Australia is in disarray, because Rugby Union is "poaching" players from the NRL.

There's 2 points I have to make about that:

1. Pay your players more - Sonny Bill is worth more than $200,000 per season. Unless the salary cap is increased it will keep happening.
   
   
2. Now the boot is on the other foot, the NRL don't like it. It's not that long ago that Union players were being poached by cashed up league clubs.

Don't get me wrong, I do like league, but when the administrators and coaches get paid more than the players then there's a real problem. In the words of SBW, "The fans don't turn up to see David Moffit".

Just When You Thought TV Couldn't Get Any Worse...

...Then along comes a new series of Beverley Hills 90210. At first when I read it I thought it was a joke.

According to Channel 10 Australia, a new series is returning on September 8th.

"Jennie Garth (Kelly), Tori Spelling (Donna) and Shannen Doherty (Brenda) will return as guest stars playing (respectively) a guidance counsellor, a boutique owner and a high school musical director, giving Generation X their dose of mature storylines."

What's next - a 60 year old Fonzie in Happy Days Millennium Edition?

Beer of the Month

I'd never tried a dark beer before, and when I was in a local bar recently I noticed they had Carlton Black - so I ordered a schooner.

And I was pleasantly surprised by the taste. I expected a thick bitter tasting beer, but what I got was a deep mocha flavour. It was almost like someone had put a shot of malted coffee into my beer.

There's also a hint of a smoky taste, which I'd put down to the drum roasted malt (actually, I read the label on the back!).

Over all it is a rich tasting beer that is really easy to drink. However it's not the kind of beer you'd waste by downing a dozen or so - more of treat at meal time or on a cold winters evening.

Polution

The footage from the Beijing Olympics has amazed me, with shots of smoggy skylines. The amount of pollution China produces is wrong.

No matter what the rest of the world does to combat global warming, it doesn't matter as long as China does nothing.

I know they have cleaned up their act for the Olympics, but I bet it all goes back to normal right after the closing ceremony.

It does make you think, if they have cut pollution down for the Olympics, how bad must it be in a regular day?

Google Street View

Good on the people at Google, for coming up with another world first - Google Street View. Australia is the 3rd country in the world to be imaged by Google's team of magical cars.

For anyone who doesn't know what it is, a team of cars drove every street in the country with digitals cameras mounted on all angles. All of the images were stuck together and you can get a 360 degree view of any street in the country.


On tonights news there was the typical news report when something new like this comes out. The camera crew went into Brisbane and asked people what they thought of it.

Most people seemed to think it was a breach of their privacy. It amazed me how stupid people are - most of them seemed to give off the impression that they thought there were web cams pointed at everyones house.

Now I've been outside for about an hour and looked everywhere, and still can't find that damned webcam!

The State of Television...And My Life

Tonight I sat down to watch some telly. We have the full Foxtel package which comes with 1000s of channels. Well, probably really around 70 or so.

But amazing with all those channels there's nothing on (hmmmm... maybe there's a song in that).

So while I was surfing through the channels I came across Celebrity Wife Swap. Just when I thought TV couldn't get any worse!

But then I got thinking, what would make a funny swap? Maybe Ozzy Osbourne could have Martha Stewart move in? Or Marge Simpson could move in with Peter Griffin on Family Guy.

Then I though... what the hell am I thinking? I'm truly bored and have no life! And to make things worse, I've even blogged it!

Weird Animals in Australia

Back by popular demand - my Weird Animals in Australia segment.

The animal in the bucket that looks like a snake, is not actually a snake - it is in fact a legless lizard. To the average uninitiated person, it looks like a snake, slithers like a snake and is scaly like a snake. But it's a fair dinkum lizard.

You can see just below the head a tiny little leg (yes, I know, how can it be a legless lizard if it does actually have legs?).

The legless lizard, like all other Australian lizards, is non venomous, and can reach up to 60 cm long.

Winter in Oz

As a kiwi who has been living in Aussie for just over a year, I'm still getting used to the weather in South East Queensland.

It's the middle of winter, and usually at home in Dunedin I'd be suffering through below zero temperatures, snow, rain and hail. And that's just a good day.

Today in Brisbane the temperature was in the mid 20s - that's a great summers day in New Zealand.

If this is winter, I can take it!

Wastage

I was recently watching a show about recycling, and was shocked at how much timber goes into making a ream of A4 copy paper. Apparently the average pine tree makes only 5 reams of copy paper, or one box.

Now think about how large a tree is, and how small a box of copy paper is. Add to that the fact that it can take 20 years for a pine tree to grow.

Now think about how much paper you use in your workplace, school or uni.

Add in another interesting fact, that each individual piece of paper takes 10 litres of water to manufacture, and copious amounts of chemicals.

I haven't even mentioned the pollution that is produced.

So next time you go to click the print button, think again before you do it. If you do really need to print, then try a print preview so you can see how many pages you are actually getting.