Category: Trivia

Maybe I’m getting old and no longer like change… But who was the idiot who decided that the All Blacks have suddenly become the Half Blacks? As a staumch supporter I switched on to the NZ/Scotland World Cup match this morning and thought that I had the wrong match. Once over that, the whole game was ruined as a viewing experience as it was virtually impossible to tell the difference between the teams.

At least once an All Black player couldn’t make a pass because he couldn’t tell who was on his team!

BRING BACK THE *ALL BLACKS* — We are not the Half Blacks nor are we the Half Greys!

For the last couple decades the America’s Cup competition has (generally) made good to be a Kiwi.

Even though I haven’t lived in NZ since I was a young boy, I have resolutely held on to my Kiwi citizenship (and passport). During the cold war I argued that this was actually a measure of self preservation as I figured that if WW3 did break out, NZ would be close to the bottom of the list of targets and I could therefore return home to comparative safety.

I also thought that, in the days when I did a lot of travelling, the NZ passport would be close to the Swiss in terms of insignificance. This proved to be wishful thinking as NZ proceeded to ignore the rest of the world opinion and play sport with South Africa, as well as antagonise the USA with an anti-nuclear policy.

Well, *we* are now within the proverbial cat’s whisker of challenging for the Cup again.

And it looks like, for the third time in a row, I will be in Auckland when the races are held. The amazing euphoria of winning. The universal, palpable, despondency of loosing, And the general feeling of pride that a nation of about 5 million souls can take on the world in a high budget contest and win will hopefully be there to be experienced when I am in Auckland later this month.

And, of course, the continued success of the All Blacks helps too!

Did you know that some part of your taxes are spent by our Government on maintaining a “National Public Toilet Map”:http://www.toiletmap.gov.au/default.aspx?

Yep, sure is, just click on the link and before you can cross your legs you’ll have a full color map marking the location of the nearest public toilet!

The site proudly announces that it is “A project of the National Continence Management Strategy”:http://www.health.gov.au/internet/wcms/Publishing.nsf/Content/Continence-2 which has its own web site! No doubt these two fascinating sites help our bureaucrats spend the $4.5 million dollars per year that is allocated to this “Strategy”.

!{float:left; padding: 0 10px 0 0}http://nigelball.org/files/toilets.gif! Catering to the hi-tech enabled grannies (never leave home without your Blueberry to locate the nearest “loo”) has been taken to the extreme. Granny can quickly transfer her latitude and longitude from her GPS to her Blueberry to find her nearby relief.

Better still, the organised traveller can use this invaluable site to plan a trip by joining the public toilet dots between here and there!

For the record, at last count there were 3,210 public toilets in Victoria, and as the picture shows, I am lucky enough to have a unisex (long live Ally McBeal) toilet just 612 metres South West of my home.

I’m just dying to register with the site so that I can plan a tour of Greater Melbourne with the guarantee that I’ll never be more than 15 minutes away from the next toilet stop!

Happy travelling campers..