To celebrate we enjoyed an afternoon drinking tea and eating French patisserie.
A different and enjoyable experience, a lovely varied choice of teas and then the variety of savoury and sweet food.
Month: June 2015
To use the cliché- A Greek Tragedy
I listened to a podcast the other day that discussed the British (David Cameron’s) desire to renegotiate membership of the EU. The analogy used was going over to a neighbour to ask for a cup of sugar when their house was burning down. I think the Guardian cartoon give the same message as the Greek debt and Eurozone crisis continues.
Samoan Speech
Isaac has studied Samoan over the last 2 years of so and has done very well. So much so that he was the year 11 rep for a speech competition. He had to prepare the speech, talk for 5 minutes without notes. He is the first non-Samoan to participate. The other performers were better than him but he got a special mention, did very well anyway and was mentioned on Samoan radio. A star.
There is no Q in Samoan apparently which may explain the spelling error!
Greek financial crisis
Despite the plethora of reporting it can be difficult to understand how this situation cannot be resolved.
At a simple level the Greek debt is huge and can never reasonably be repaid so forcing or expecting the country to do so, with inevitable worsening of the economy, seems futile. There is no solidarity with the Greek government within the EU and the financial masters expect their view to prevail despite its lack of evidence of effect and predicted consequences.
In the end it cannot end well I think.
Football World Cup
The football world cup as hit New Zealand and we have been part of the action. The U-20 world cup that is.
No representation from England of course.
Joe and I did go to see a couple of games a group game between Argentina who were at that point one of the favourites and Ghana. That was a good game with great skill on display. Ghana went 3-0 up and Argentina came back to 3-2 in the last ten minutes looking like they may take an unexpected point from the game. Ghana were the better team and played fast, running, attacking football. Some fine talent on display.
It came to pass that Argentina went out t this stage and Ghana in the round of sixteen.
We also watched the Wellington hosted quarter final between Senegal and Uzbekistan. Not such great quality and I wondered all through the game how these two had progressed. A turgid game with a lower level of skill on display than the previous viewing. Senegal won deservedly but I cannot see them beating Brazil.
No more games in wellington. The semis are in Christchurch and Auckland and the final in Auckland too. The crowds were not great; 5+ thousand for the first game and 10+ for the quarter-final, and the latter with lots of kids.
I don’t think the tournament has set alight the Kiwi public. Not that I have seen anyway.
