Liquid Litter

Tonight, being a Friday night, my wife and I purchased dinner from a local Chinese takeaway. On perusal of the printed menu board, I noticed that you could order a 1.5 litter drink. A 1.5 litter drink? I wonder what litter flavour consists of.

The amusing thing is, that someone had attempted to correct "litter" by placing a slither of semi-transparent sticky tape over one of the "t"s.

I guess at the end of the day, "liter" in American format, is closer to litre than litter, though not quite there.

See for yourself, go to The Flying Dragon Takeaways in Cambridge, NZ.

Creepy Cricket Fans

Cricket is traditionally a gentleman's sport. However, these 2011 World Cup fans caught on camera at two different matches, appear to have come across as rather unusual gentleman.

The Sri Lankan supporter, firstly pictured, wearing some weird voodoo-type face mask, was filmed in the crowd, poking his tongue towards a (thankfully)fake baby.

The second picture is of a fan who attended the Bangladesh vs West Indies match, who walked into camera view, and then just stood there, staring coldy straight at the camera, sporadically twitching his face and not smiling at all. He looked so scary. The commentators said the Bangladeshi fans were smiling despite their team losing the match. He certainly wasn't. He would be a good casting option for another movie of The Omen, after all, he looks convincingly evil.

Here's a couple of links to the respective video footage.

http://www.totalprosports.com/2011/03/23/creepy-cricket-fan-performs-voodoo-on-baby-video/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkcJ2Qv3Nwc

Scary indeed.

Email Scam

Here's an email scam I received. I read it, and I thought; yeah right ... you've got to be kidding.

I thought I'd post it here for anyone, who is not familiar with these scams:

Good Day Wayne ,

This is a personal email directed to you and I request that it should
be treated as such.

I am the Personal account officer to the late Eng.Randolf
Grimsey,hereinafter referred to as 'my client' who worked as an
independent oil magnate in my country (England) and unfortunately died
in a car crash with his immediate family on the 4th of Oct,2005.

Since the death of my client in 4th of Oct, 2005, I have written
several letters to the embassy with an intent to locate any of his
extended relatives whom shall be claimants/beneficiaries of his
abandoned personal estate and all such efforts have been to no avail.

More so, I have received official letters from our bank in the last
few weeks suggesting a likely proceeding for confiscation of his
abandoned personal assets in line with existing laws by the bank in
which my client deposited the sum of US$8.5 million Dollars.

On this note I decided to search for a credible person and finding
that you and my client bear similar last name, I was urged to contact
you, that I may, with your consent, present you to the "trustee" bank
as my late client's surviving family member so as to enable you put up
a claim to the bank in that capacity as a next of kin of my client.

I find this possible for the fuller reasons that you bear a similar
last name with my client making it a lot easier for you to put up a
claim in that capacity. I propose that 35% of the net sum will accrue
to you at the conclusion of this deal in so far as I do not incur
further expenses.

Therefore, to facilitate the immediate transfer of this fund, you
need, first to contact me via this email signifying your interest and
as soon as I obtain your confidence, I will immediately appraise you
with the complete details as well as fax you the documents, with which
you are to proceed and i shall direct on how to put up an
applicationto the bank.

However, you will have to accent to an express agreement which I will
forward to you in order to bind us in this transaction.

Upon the receipt of your reply, I will send you by fax or E-mail the
next step to take. I will not fail to bring to your notice that this
proposal is hitch-free and that you should not entertain any fears as
the required arrangements have been made for the completion of this
transfer. Like I said, I require only a sole confidentiality on this.

I guarantee that this will be executed under a legitimate arrangement
that will protect you from any breach of the law.For quick and cordial
communication I will appreciate you to forward your personal telephone
number and fax.

Best regards,
Mr.Allen Mark.



Note that this email plays on my surname. How original, same story different words.
Don't ever be fooled by this nonsense.
They want to rob you of your hard earned cash.

Auckland houses less affordable than New York

Low incomes put buying a home out of the reach of many.

New Zealand houses are among the world's most expensive when incomes are taken into account - and Auckland and Tauranga homes are less affordable than those in New York, says a major survey released today.

Low incomes and high house prices are leaving Kiwis badly off and preventing many from climbing onto the housing ladder.

The seventh annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey of 325 cities and regions has given us the thumbs down, putting New Zealand alongside Australia, Britain, the United States, Canada and Ireland as among the world's worst housing markets.

Four of the eight New Zealand markets surveyed - Auckland, Tauranga, Christchurch and Wellington - were classed "severely unaffordable". The other four - Hamilton, Napier-Hastings, Palmerston North, and Dunedin - were "seriously unaffordable".

Despite three years of a depressed economy, housing remains out of many Kiwis' reach. The situation has worsened because house prices fell only marginally yet job security lessened and wage rises dried up.

Reserve Bank and Real Estate Institute data were used to measure affordability by taking median house prices and dividing those by gross annual median household income. This gave the house price-income median multiple measure.

The ideal income-to-loan ratio is around three times an annual salary. But in New Zealand it takes 5.3 times the average annual salary to pay for a house. In Tauranga it takes 6.5 times the average annual salary and in Auckland 6.4 times. In New York, it's 6.1.

Survey co-author Hugh Pavletich, of Christchurch, called for more land to be made available for housing.

"The Government needs to recognise the importance of dealing with the housing supply issues with urgency, so that New Zealand is more affordable and competitive than Australia. This will encourage young New Zealanders to stay in their own country and contribute to its development.

"There is much work to do so that New Zealanders do not have to pay any more than three times their annual household income to house themselves. New Zealanders are paying twice what they should be for housing and construction costs are currently twice per square metre what they should be, due to urban planning degrading the performance of the residential construction sector over recent decades," Mr Pavletich said.

Tauranga is our least affordable city, followed by Auckland, Christchurch, Wellington, Dunedin, Hamilton, Napier-Hastings and Palmerston North.

The survey has been criticised by some as pushing right-wing free-market theories and developers' interests. But Brendan O'Donovan, Westpac's chief economist, praised it as useful and said three possible solutions to high house prices included relaxing urban land limits, cutting building compliance costs and imposing a tax on under-used land to discourage developers from hoarding property.

"The Australian and New Zealand housing markets are so stretched, whichever way you cut it compared to most of the rest of the world. A lot of us are saying if you are trying to get more affordable housing, it's not done by first-home buyer grants but more flexible supply-side measures."

This month, Westpac senior economist Dominick Stephens warned home buyers that present below-average fixed term mortgage rates could start rising rapidly.

Atlanta is the most affordable major city and Hong Kong is the least affordable. Sydney has become less affordable than Vancouver.

The Knight Frank Global House Price Index out late last year showed New Zealand had one of the world's smallest price falls.

Please Divert Your Course

This is based on an actual radio conversation between a U.S. Navy
aircraft carrier (U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln) and Canadian authorities
off the coast of Newfoundland in October, 1995. (The radio
conversation was released by the Chief of Naval Operations on
10/10/95 authorized by the Freedom of Information Act.)

Canadians: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the South to
avoid collision.

Americans: Recommend you divert your course 15 degrees to the
North to avoid a collision.

Canadians: Negative. You will have to divert your course 15
degrees to the South to avoid a collision.

Americans: This is the Captain of a US Navy ship. I say again,
divert YOUR course.

Canadians: No, I say again, you divert YOUR course.

Americans: THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS LINCOLN, THE SECOND
LARGEST SHIP IN THE UNITED STATES' ATLANTIC FLEET. WE ARE
ACCOMPANIED BY THREE DESTROYERS, THREE CRUISERS AND NUMEROUS
SUPPORT VESSELS. I DEMAND THAT YOU CHANGE YOUR COURSE 15 DEGREES
NORTH--I SAY AGAIN, THAT'S ONE FIVE DEGREES NORTH--OR
COUNTER-MEASURES WILL BE UNDERTAKEN TO ENSURE THE SAFETY OF THIS SHIP.

Canadians: This is a lighthouse. Your call.

Calling Extras for The Hobbit.

I've read in tonight's news that the call has been put out for extras to be auditioned for The Hobbit.

Essential requirements are:
- Men and Women aged 17-80 years
- Men: MUST be UNDER 170cm (5 foot 7 inches)
- Women: MUST be UNDER 158cm (5 foot 2 inches)
- You MUST be prepared to be available at short notice


It seems that at 176cm tall, I don't qualify. Does anyone have some form of spinal compressing device out there? ... LOL!

I guess that with being part way through the process of buying a house, I have enough on my plate at present.

So, if you fit all the above requirements and live in the central North Island of New Zealand, opportunity could be knocking at your door.

Bride Flight

Hi reader

I've been a bit slack on maintaining this blog in recent times. Whenever something newsworthy happens, I tend to forget about it when I log onto my machine. Sometimes I even forget that this blog exists. Hopefully, I can turn a corner here. It took me a few attempts to suss out my password.

Anyhow, three years ago, I had posted here about being a movie extra for the movie Bride Flight.
The movie was finally released on DVD recently. I didn't get around to seeing it during screening at the cinema. My parents informed me that I do appear a few times as an extra in the movie. I have since watched this myself, and identified myself in nine instances. It's not my taste in movies, but it's also not everyday that my mug shot appears in the background of a movie.