KEY POINTS:
Gail's mother recently had surgery at Waitakere Hospital and received excellent care, but the "vegetarian meal" was a joke. When she could finally eat, this is what was served: three fried vegetable croquettes, consisting mainly of mashed potato and breadcrumbs. "Note the pretty little piece of parsley," says Gail. "Presumably that's her healthy greens for the day. One wonders about the hospitals banning of junk food from the premises given that they supply 'meals' like this."
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A reader stumbled across Harcourts real estate agent Doug Bennett's website bigcats.co.nz with a picture of a lion and the tagline: "Honesty, loyalty, confidence, courage, humour." "I thought he was just flogging houses for over-inflated commissions," says our astute reader. "But it seems he is in fact scaling Everest and doing stand-up at the same time."
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A Taupo reader reports that his brother, playing on his home course of Knutsford, Cheshire (UK), says that on looking at a ball he found in the rough he saw on one side the words "Millbrook Resort" and on the other "Queenstown, New Zealand". As a regular visitor to New Zealand, his immediate thought was that it must have been a pretty good drive to get that far.
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A young promising triathlete, off to the other side of the world to train in the hope of getting to the Olympics next year, gets a nasty fright at Cathay Pacific's check-in. Rebecca Spence saved her money to go to Europe and was at the airport, says her dad. Her baggage was made up of only two bags, each had a bike, a wetsuit, race shoes, etc which added up to 28kg over the baggage limit. After 20 similar international flights with exactly the same gear and not one airline charging more than $200 excess, the airline stung Rebecca for $86 per kg for her 28kgs - a total of $2400. Cathay Pacific's answer? We have to get approval from overseas and extra baggage means they take less commercial freight. "What they didn't say was they only get $20kg for commercial freight and the rest goes into their coffers."
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A group of 300 marauding monkeys are sexually harassing the women of Nachu, a village in Kenya, in order to steal their food. The monkeys are groping the women's breasts and gesturing to their private parts to intimidate women and children - who are responsible for growing maize, potatoes, beans - and stealing their food. In an attempt to scare the monkeys away, the women are now wearing their husband's clothing. (Source: BBC)
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Men who queued up for a topless car wash in New York got a bit of a shock to find the washers were men. Young women lured drivers into the fire department car wash in Shirley, Long Island, but once inside there were shirtless male firefighters washing the cars.
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A reader reckons NZ's two locally made game shows, The Rich List and Deal Or No Deal, are paying $50 less tax per session for audience extras, but are still having trouble filling the live studio audience. "The talent agency I am registered with sent at least 10 texts over the past two weeks trying to get bums on seats," he says.
Today's Video Webpick:This New Zealand made ad for Sky Televisions adult channel Fresh TV is very clever, very kiwi and very funny. Can you find all the sexual metaphors? (Safe for work, but does contain sexual wordplay not for the frail or prudish). Watch it here. These are the very best online videos from Ana's online magazine Spare Room.
