4WD Sand Dune Climbing:

Justin | MySpace Video

Chess Boxing

Wife Carrying

Cheese Rolling

Camel Wrestling

 CycloCross

 Tow-in Surfing

Free Soloing

 Bog Snorkelling

VIA

There is a lot of water here in the 4th best country in the world, we’re surrounded by the stuff, most of the country was created by mighty rivers washing down bits of mountain until eventually we had somewhere for our sheep to graze. We use water to make electricity,  jelly for trifle and WAR!

Water fights are not unique to New Zealand, but what folks in the northern hemisphere will find unique is that a family water fight is a kiwi Christmas tradition. Every Christmas my family, and many family’s like it, have a huge water fight which starts sometime after the presents are opened and ends when your annoying, spoiled brat cousin starts crying, and New Zealand holds the world record for the biggest water fight. The record was set in October last year when more than 2671 kiwis engaged in aquatic combat.

Always keen to do better, next month the folks from the ‘Naki are giving it another go. The water fight will take place on Saturday, April 4 at the Pukekura Raceway.

The first 1000 entries will receive a free water gun. Good on ya New Plymouth!

David McLeod – 4th Infantry Bucket and Hose Division

I am a big fan of The Wire and I’d go so far to say it’s the best TV show ever. It may be a little sadistic on my part, but the program leaves me drained and disturbed at the end of an episode thanks to the complexity of its multiple storylines and the number of characters. There is also the challenge of following the localized black dialect that the program tries to represent as truthfully as it does its other details.

The show is set in the Baltimore ghetto, “Yo” is both a salutation and the third-person singular pronoun; “feel me,” means “listen to what I’m telling you”; and the use of “b*tch” has mostly replaced the N-word.

The cops have their own language as well, in which a capable officer is “good police,” bystanders caught in the crossfire are “taxpayers,” and young boys up to no good are called “hoppers.”

The Wire won much love from critics but not much in the way of ratings. Maybe being trapped inside a “black, drug-dealing, gangbangers head” isn’t a nice comfy place to be hanging…

I encourage you all to watch this excerpt on the rules of playing chess, ghetto style.

 Feel me. Richard Spielberg.

As the lone American on the TimeZoneOne – Christchurch team, I’d like to share one reason I like living in New Zealand: there is no rabies. That’s right, we can live without the paralyzing fear of contracting the paralyzing and deadly virus that is rabies.

FYI: Rabies (Latin: rabies, “madness, rage, fury” also “hydrophobia“) is a viralzoonotic neuroinvasive disease that causes acute encephalitis (inflammation of the brain, that’s bad) in mammals. In non-vaccinated humans, rabies is almost invariably fatal after neurological symptoms have developed, but prompt post-exposure vaccination may prevent the virus from progressing. There are only six known cases of a person surviving symptomatic rabies, and only one known case of survival in which the patient received no rabies-specific treatment either before or after illness onset.

So if you live in New Zealand or plan on visiting and you run into a creature like this (see below), your first question should be “What is that God forsaken thing?” not “Will I catch rabies from that God forsaken thing?”

Another side effect of a rabies free country is that cats, even kittens, can fight with dogs with the utmost of confidence that they can use their claws to their full effect and not risk getting dog cooties, aka rabies. The following video fully illustrates this confidence. The video is of our cat when she was only a couple months old fighting with abandon with our three year old Staffordshire Terrier/Labrador cross dog, one tough dog. She is fighting without her claws, I know, but notice the confidence in her eyes. They are friends after all.

If you aren’t dying to move here now, I’ll have to try something else I guess.

Mark