Well, it’s a whole new ballgame. This morning I turned on the TV and was very gratified to hear Dennis Conner saying that he thought Team New Zealand’s NZL-82 was the faster boat, and he gave the exact same reasons that I’d been giving. Today Alinghi seem to have found a reserve of more speed in SUI-64, bringing them up to parity with NZL-82. I was rather surprised. Alinghi caught a very nice shift in the opening 10 minutes of the race, and proceeded to demonstrate textbook tactics in holding off NZL-82 for the rest of the race. Is SUI-64 really as fast as NZL-82 with its revolutionary hula? I don’t think so. I think that the defeat TNZ suffered in race 2 where they were passed on the final downwind leg of the race has seriously shaken TNZ’s confidence. Now we’re seeing the repercussions on the race course. If the kiwis want to hold the Cup, they are going to have to dig deep and find a new strength of character to prevail.

Now it’s time for some other observations on life in New Zealand. First, let me talk about the three-phase traffic lights. They have about a dozen intersections in downtown Auckland that behave this way. Phase 1: traffic moves in the north/south direction. Phase 2: traffic moves in the east/west direction. Phase 3: all traffic stops, and pedestrians cross in all directions, including diagonally. It takes a bit of getting used to, but I kinda like it now. Second, kiwi drivers tend to be supercareful about pedestrians in or even near the crosswalks. However, heaven help you if you cross a street and you aren’t in the cross walk. This can be a problem as there are many traffic circles and they tend not to have crosswalks. I’ve had several close calls in the past week and it is starting to disturb me.

In terms of my activities, let me bring you up to date. A couple of days ago I watched the America’s Cup recap on TV at 11pm, except it didn’t run until almost midnight. This was because the race itself had run so late that other programming had to be moved back and there was a domino effect. During the commericals, I watched the kiwis playing cricket in the world cup against South Africa. It turns out I like watching cricket, so I ended up staying awake until 5am to watch the end of the match. So of course, yesterday I slept in. Yesterday was mostly a lazy day, though I did finally get to the supoermarket and restock my staples and perishables and whatnot. Then I made dinner (tuna casserole). Tonight I’ll have more left-over casserole and I also promised another hostel resident that I’d make American-style biscuits for her, since she had shared her extra corn fritters with me a couple of days ago. Her name is Griselda and she’s 78 years old with the heart of a 20-something. She reminds me a lot of my grandparents.