23rd March

Another mixed bag Monday. Went in early to try and do the photocopying that I didn’t get done yesterday. Didn’t even make it to ¼ of the stuff, and the printer was out of ink, as usual, it’s only buy as you need it, so there went the morning. It wasn’t all bad, I caught up with a couple of people online (Hi Moira) finally, got some emails cleared away.

Class turned into a shambles, Adrian dragged me off to Heritage, they rang early this morning wanting the wood chipper urgently, despite never getting back to us about the price or quote, and Adrian wanted to see just what the crew were doing. Huge old Agathis macrophylla cut down, full of seed cones which I grabbed for seed, although they are a few months away from being ripe, some of the seeds may germinate.

We’ve only got the one really good specimen at the gardens, they are becoming rare here now, cut down for timber mostly. Endemic to the Solomons and Bouganville.

Spent the afternoon driving around the farm suppliers in Honiara trying to get prices for stuff to go into the funding proposal, only one place that was helpful, the others were really Solomon Island Time with it all, no wariwari, tomorrow or Thursday we’ll get back to you. I only had to have it all priced for Will by 4pm today. Anyway, it’s done as much as we could.

I mentioned back a few days about being an arachnophobe, just as Tiffany and Shirleyeta were leaving tonight one of the biggest huntsman spiders I have seen wandered out from behind the filing cabinet, walked up the wall, and started heading across the ceiling in my direction. The last thing I like is having a bloody big spider walking around above me, managed to chase it outside with a rolled up newspaper, then into the shrubbery. It’ll be back inside somewhere by the morning, they tend to like living indoors.

Other than that, the day settled down into it’s usual pattern finally. Steve called in again, to pick up my Security Plan, as I said to him, no matter what is written in it, if there is any trouble, my plan is to get to the airport and wait in the bar for the next flight out. If the road is blocked, I’ll be in the nearest large tourist hotel, in the bar.

He was going to send that off to Wellington as my Security Plan, well, it’s mostly true, I’ll certainly be in the bar, somewhere.

Found Jesse Rainbows birthday present, but as she reads this, I’m not going to say what it is.

Power off again, it's 9pm, I give up