NZ Life

I’ve nothing of interest to report. For the past 3 weeks I’ve basically just worked late, ate simply, and slept randomly. This has been my plan though, because things being turned upside down at work were scheduled perfectly to coincide with Angela’s trip, so I figured I might as well go flat out for a few weeks before returning to normalcy.

Since I have nothing to report, I’ll tell you what being reported, at least on talk radio. These are a few of the bigger stories in the past couple weeks:

• Cricket World Cup, and not just the murders and corrupt side of the sport. Cricket is a distant second to rugby in NZ, but world cup action is still big news. NZ is doing well, BTW. Percentage of sports coverage devoted to the NCAA Tournament: 0%.
• The proposed “Anti-Smacking” bill. Smacking is spanking, and if some have their way it might not be allowed in NZ. Take a controversial bill like that and then have the ruling Labour government trying to rush it through parliament under an urgency motion, and you’ve got a fine mess.
• PM Helen Clark visits the U.S. Did you know she was just in town? She met with Bush for two hours, didn’t get her free trade agreement and was reminded that while not being in the “nuclear family”, NZ was still a very good friend of the US. And she got to meet the CEO of Microsoft, which was probably more fun. (She even took back some Maori heads from the Chicago Field Museum)
• Ribena, a hugely popular drink in NZ, was absolutely pummeled this week after admitting that some of their juices have little or no vitamin C, despite their aggressive “this stuff is good for your kid because of all the vitamin C” campaign. Good Job, GlaxoSmithKline. The kicker: the finding came from a couple of varsity students working on a science project 😉 )

Ah, such a nice break from depressing war news and incessant campaign coverage. Have a good weekend.