Sideswipe: November 30: Crocs are breeding in Henderson

Crocs are breeding in Henderson. "These all belong to my husband ... and he has just bought another pair," writes Karen, exasperated. Photo / Supplied

Game you'll eat up

A new game in the pipeline requires the player to swallow a sensor. Forbes.com says Guts Game requires two players to each swallow a 20mm-long, FDA-cleared, single-use sensor (originally developed to monitor people in extreme environments, such as firefighters and soldiers).

Here's how the game works: "Participants can then rack up points by changing their body's core temperature via hot or cold showers, ingesting liquids of varying temperatures, eating spicy food, and exercising. The sensor ideally transmits information every 10 seconds to a CorTemp receiver as it travels through the players' digestive tracts, though there can be time lags in the reporting. The game ends when the sensor is excreted from one player's body — after about 24-36 hours — and the points they earned while the sensor was inside them are tallied up."

Life cheap across ditch

Bunnings Australia vs. Bunnings New Zealand. Photo / Supplied

"I have been renovating my house recently and I've been quite shocked at the price difference that I noticed between Bunnings Australia and New Zealand while I was shopping for stuff around the house. You can protect your hallway cheaper in Australia with smoke alarms at A$55 ($58.47) versus here at $64.90. You can stay cooler in Australia with fans at A$173.50 ($184.70) or sweat it out here at $229. That's a price difference of $44.30.

"It's even cheaper to grow plants in Australia with potting mix at A$7.26 ($7.72) versus $10.98. It's cheaper to hang your clothes out to dry in Australia at A$289 ($307.22) versus the NZ price of $475. That's a ridiculous price difference of about $168 to get the same thing. Maybe, Bunnings had a cunning plan when they said ... if you see the same stocked item at a lower price at a 'competitor' then they'll beat it by 15 per cent. Wonder if their own outfit across the ditch counts?"

Got a Sideswipe? Send your pictures, links and anecdotes to Ana at ana.samways@nzherald.co.nz

Simple things you learn at an embarrassingly late age ...

1. In my late teens that "lest we forget" (the Anzac day expression) was "best we forget". I had never heard of the word "lest".
2. Driving in the T2 onramp lane with five people in the car, the front passenger, who'll remain nameless, exclaims, "Careful you don't get caught in here!" "What?" "Well, you don't have two people do you?"
3. Difference between foreshadowing and foreplay. Grandmother was amused, Mum was mortified.
4. For most of my life I assumed Neil Armstrong was a black man, because I'd never seen Neil outside the space suit, but I had seen Louis Armstrong. It never occurred to me that there would be anything unusual about a black astronaut in the 60s.