Hi all,As always, we hope you are doing well. It's been an exciting week so far in dunedin so we thought we'd share a couple of the highlights. On Saturday, as part of client entertainment junket, my company gave Andrea and I free tickets to go and watch the New Zealand All Blacks (the national rugby team) play against the defending world champions, the South African Springboks. It felt like the entire city came alive for this game and you got a feeling just how important Rugby is in this country. It was just about all anyone could talk about for the week leading up to the game. The game was fast paced and exciting and hopefully Andrea and I didn't alienate any of our company clients with our neverending questions. "Why is a score called a try, shouldn't it be a did?" "why is this match called a test?" "I can't figure how anyone loses possession of the ball, it just seems like one team has it, there's a call or a tackle, then another has it. This just doesn't make any sense?!?" and the more common, "what the heck just happened?". But besides that it was a neat experience.
The questionersThe incongruous pregame crowd entertainment was a showing of the Selwin Ballet. From our perspective it looked like some very husky and not particularly good ballet. Turns out it was a bunch of guys attempting to "take the piss out". In other words, a giant goof. But it looks like it took a great deal of practice and it was entertaining to see the prima ballerina lift and carry the male lead dancer.
As tradition for all New Zealand Rugby matches the All-Blacks performed a HAKA prior to the game. This is a traditional Maori war dance intended to produce fear in ones opponents. below is the grainy distant video that I took of the Haka but to be honest it's probably not worth the bandwidth to download. But I know some of you will anyway so here it is....
For a better idea check out this link...
It was a close game with several lead changes. With about 5 minutes left the All-Blacks were up by 3 when a streaker tried to take the field but was briskly tackled by one of the field security personnel. What followed was a distracting (and rather disturbing) wrestling match between the security guard and a naked man for several minutes. The poor security guard was getting no help from any of his companions who were watching barely 5 meters away. (To be honest, I wouldn't of jumped in there either). The worst part was during the shenanigans we missed the go ahead try by the Springboks. Boo. All told Springboks 30 - All Blacks 28 - Streakers 0
The other excitement of the week is that Saturday kicked off Cadbury Carnival week. That's right, those delightful people who bring you the cadbury bunny and cadbury easter eggs make lots of chocolate right here in Dunedin and have a weeklong festival to celebrate it. Oh Yeah!!! Monday's event was the Jaffa race. For reference, a jaffa is a small chocolate candy in an orange candy shell. The race takes place down Baldwin Street (the steepest street in the world!!!) just a couple blocks from our house, So we took a long lunch break to get down there and watch the race. The organizers put individual numbers on 30,000 of these little chocolate balls and then dumped them at the top of the hill. People sold raffle tickets for each of these balls and if your ball was one of the first ones down the hill you won a prize. It was a neat little event (that I'm eternally grateful I didn't have to clean up after). The neat and unexpected part was not only the roar of the candies as they raced by but the intense fragrance of orange and chocolate as the wave of candies passed you by. Here's a video from my position up by the steepest part of the street....
Here's looking down the hill at the crowds gathered below.The rest of the week should be exciting as well. Andrea and I are going to the chocolate and beer tour at Speights Brewery on Thursday, followed by the Larnach Castle winter costume ball on Friday. Then on Saturday Dave's going in a kilt to a company function (with Braveheart theme).
So stay tuned.
Love to all,
Dave and Andrea
ps. post jaffa race update - there have been two car accidents on Baldwin street since the race due to greasy conditions. yuk!
1 comment:
I love the video of the candy. That has to go on my list of stuff to see before I die.
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