21 June 2010
Categorised as Miscellaneous & tagged with competition, new zealand, sports.
That’s right, I’m talking about the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
I went to bed just after Italy scored the penalty goal against New Zealand to make a 1-1 tie. I woke up to the news of the game finishing at the same 1-1 tie and I was like, “Holy shit”.
Game summary at FIFA.com
And not only me, my Facebook homepage this morning is filled with status messages announcing the surprise.
Now, the big players such as the German and Italian teams receive unlimited budgets when they attend the World Cup tournaments. They get paid BIG bucks, sleep in the most luxurious beds, but all that the Kiwi team strives on is simply the spirit of sportsmanship. First we tied 1-1 against Slovakia (rank 25). Now this? We were ranked 73 places behind Italy, we were made up of half part-time players, and dude, that 1 goal we scored is the second ever goal scored by New Zealand in the FIFA since the 1980s.
More embarrassingly for the four-time FIFA World Cup champs, if it wasn’t for the badly called penalty shot for which the referee is now being verbally bashed, it would have been Italy 0 to New Zealand 1.
Aside from the FIFA, New Zealand Olympic gold medalists are similarly part-timers who compete for an interest in the sport, and upon returning to New Zealand, need to continue working in their other jobs to feed themselves. Consider how Chinese participants are pushed into hard training from a young age, and that winning a single gold medal for Taiwan equates to not having to work for the rest of your life.
Despite what the scoreboard says, despite being an underdog, New Zealand is a winner. We are the biggest champion of all for having the true sportsmanship that is supposed to ground these sports competitions.
Woooooooooooooooooot!
11 July 2008
Categorised as Site-Related & tagged with competition.
Lucy! The correct number was 712. Plugs to Shen-Shen too for getting the answer 12 minutes after Lucy. 
And no one else managed to read my mind. 
(For those who missed it, I’m referring to the Winter Competition 2008.)
The numbers were on the pages History, ‘The Pillars of the Earth’ and Resources. Number 7 was apparently the hardest; or in other words, the males were especially hopeless at finding it.
What I found really funny was the number of page views on the day the competition was launched:
I know for a fact that the number was boosted so much thanks to a particular few males who failed to read paragraph 5 and ended up searching through my blog archives.
Note: they are not bolded together with other words e.g. “level 16″ is ok, but “level 6″ and “2006″ are not. They are also not part of headings, links or any of my blog entries.
Sigh. Males. Sigh.
(I use the great Clicky to track my site statistics!)
Well, this “thing” I’m giving to Lucy for a gift… She’d probably go all “WTF” at me because it’s really quite “wtf” for a person who’s spent a while finding numbers on my sitemap-less site. But once she receives it, she’s obligated to blog about it. So you’ll all see it then. Don’t worry Lucy, it’s not flavoured condoms. I promise.
3 July 2008
Categorised as Site-Related & tagged with competition.
Oh great. Short holidays. I’ve studied, I’ve partied; and as promised, here’s the Winter Competition 2008 (Winter where I am; idea from Amanda and Tracy). Make sure you read ALL the information below if you intend to enter!
What’s happening?
I’m thinking of a three-digit number. The first person to get the number wins (otherwise the first person to get closest to the number).
Note: close as in numerically close. If the number is 654, person getting 647 wins rather than 645.
Hints
The three individual digits in the number are bolded on random pages of this site. You’ll just have to rearrange the numbers to form your guess. Alternatively, you can just guess any three-digit number and ignore the hint.
Note: they are not bolded together with other words e.g. “level 16” is ok, but “level 6” and “2006” are not. They are also not part of headings, links or any of my blog entries.
You’ll need to…
- Submit a comment to this post with “Answer: ###” on a new line. You can write other comments but in a separate paragraph. And don’t reveal any of the pages with the hint number or you’ll be helping those after you!
- Submit the answer before 10 July 2008. No actual time. It’ll end whenever I check this post on 11 July 2008 (in NZ).
- Be ready to send me your actual postal address once you’re announced as the winner! I’ll contact the winner for this privately.
Note: One guess per person only and I advise that you don’t base your guess upon guesses in previous comments because of… *cough* obvious reasons (answers are hidden). And if you fail to find all the numbers, hey, it won’t hurt to submit a random guess answer anyway! ;)
Prize!
You’ll get this little… “thing” sent to your place. I absolutely adore them. They’re suitable for both genders and there are many different styles/colours to pick from. If you have a website, I’ll be picking one which I think matches you or your website the most. Otherwise I’ll just go by intuition based on your name, email and comment.
Alright I think that’s all. 3… 2… 1… and the competition starts! 
