Sideswipe

A lady who is new to Auckland receives a $40 parking ticket. Anxious to pay the fine immediately but not knowing how to get from Avondale to the city, she summons a taxi and tells the driver to drive into the CBD - with her following behind him. When they get to the city the taxi driver tells her the price of the taxi "ride" was $55, which she refuses to pay on the grounds that she wasn't actually "in" the taxi. The driver, needless to say, insists and $55 is duly paid. Expensive parking ticket at $95.

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Is greater Auckland the unluckiest place on the planet? A reader writes: "In the big Christmas Lotto promotion Aucklanders won eight of the 55 prizes - that's 14.5 per cent. Yet the region accounts for about one-third of the population. So Aucklanders appear to be half as lucky as the average for the rest of the country. Even the Wellington area, with about one-third Auckland's population, won as many of the prizes as Auckland did."

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Susan Henderson from Browns Bay bought a fan from Farmers and had to chortle at the instructions, which advised that "babies, patients and old men shouldn't be blown directly for a long time".

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A fake beer belly to allow morons to drink booze at sporting events is described as "a neoprene sling and a polyurethane bladder with a tube for dispensing worn under clothing for concealment ... looks just like a beer belly". (Ladies, if your bloke seriously thinks this is a good idea - dump him quick.)

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We've all heard of workplace discrimination based on sex, race, religion and age. But discrimination based on the zodiac sign under which you were born? Apparently this is the case in China, where the year of the rooster gives way to the year of the dog late this month. Chinese tradition holds 2006 will be a year of bad luck for people born under the sign of the dog, but misfortune has come early for some looking for jobs, the state media say. Chinese companies looking for recruits have deliberately passed over candidates born as dogs in China's ancient 12-animal astrological cycle to ward off the bad luck expected for people in years of the same sign, the China Youth Daily said. In China, hiring biases have reached ridiculous proportions, even discriminating over things such as height and blood type. (Source: Reuters)