Awesome All Blacks

The Haka before wacking Wallabies

Really, its quite fantastic that we have any internet connections at all way out here, so I shouldn’t complain. Out here, if it wasn’t for the Internet it would be easy enoughl to feel isolated and cut off from the rest of the world, from my family and friends especially, and from sources of advice and information  and support that one ordinarily relies on at work. But I don’t feel cut off – well, maybe  a little bit!. The wireless connections here are CDMA – I am not sure what that is exactky but I remember we had CDMA phones about a decade ago in Australia, - its much faster than dial-up, which we used to thnk was amazing – but  Ive been spoiled by  broadband. More frustrating than the slow speed is the way in which the connections drop out altogether from time to time, so that the photo Ive been uploading  for 20 minutes – yes its that slow - just disappears, and its even more annoying when its an email  or a blog Ive just written that disappears. So I have learned the best approach is to write the email in Word then cut and paste into Gmail .or the Blog so at least if it disappears I have a copy and don’t need to rewrite the thing! The expletives emanating from my flat  have reduced to a minimum.

On the weekend I was counting the hours down to the All Blacks v Wallabies semi final. It was potentially a great clash, the Wallabies having a perfect record over the All Blacks in World Cup Rugby, and the All Blacks 25 year unbroken run of wins against the Wallabies at Eden Park, the loss of Dan Carter, the worries about Richie McCaws foot, the inconsistent brilliance of Quade Cooper – I just SO wanted to watch it live. In fact there are internet pay sites where  in the past I have watched live Tests, and early last year the last Americas Cup Race – Oracle vs Alinghi – but the connections here are just too slow for that.
And then , just as the game was about to start and I was logging on to the Sydney Morning Herald website which runs a “Live Blog” - ie written commentary updated every 2 or 3 minutes- I suddenly remembered Internet Radio! A quick Google search for NZ Internet Radio and next I was listening to live Commentary of the game : Fantastic – especially when combined with my hand drawn rugby field, posts at each end , the ABs and Wallabies territories marked and lines and dots where the ball was kicked to , where there was a line-out, a scrum and the  score and time scribbled along the edge of the piece of paper – I was almost there I tell you!. The commentator by the way was brilliant and I can understand why some people watching games like this live on TV turn the sound off and the Radio  on – the radio guys put so much more into their  commentary and get so excited! The connection dropped out of course, about three or four times and with ten minutes to go I had an urgent call to Maternity but by then I think we all could see the All Blacks were not going to be beaten.

Delighted All Black supporters in Motta

At the inaugural World Cup the Final score was All Blacks 29  France 9. The All Blacks skipper then was David Kirk, a colleague of mine at med school. Now  France and the All Blacks  face each other again. I suspect next weekends Final will produce a similar result given that the French could only beat Wales with one man down by 1 point, but then again France have unexpectedly booted the All Blacks right out of the World Cup on two occasions in the past. But, whilst waiting for the Fat Lady to sing, New Zealand must be pretty buoyant this week. Their win over the Wallabies was brilliant.