Mixed day, good, bad, and funny. David has joined in with me about Andrew, which is good, he had a few words with Andrew about the opportunities we’re trying to open up for him if he can show us it’s going to be worthwhile for us to do so. I’ve got a few addresses in Auckland to contact in a little while and see if I can place Andrew there for a year to learn and get some certification in Aboriculture and Safety Regulations, not that the safety stuff is heeded here, but it will help.
Caught up with Les in the Council Works Dept, and he’s going to organise the back hoe and compactor to clean up the Childrens Playground tomorrow, all the rubbish we couldn’t remove. And he’ll send the backhoe into the Gardens so we can dig out the swimming hole properly, and hopefully that will be the final thing we have to do there.
The repercussions from reporting Robert the Forestry employee who hacked our tree about have started. I mentioned that he is wantok to Fred, the head of Forestry, wantok is family or tribal or language relationship, it’s thicker than glue as far as the people here are concerned. One of the more friendly people in Forestry rang Tiffany late today, and Fred is having an eviction order drawn up to remove us from the Botanic Gardens, because we tried to get his wantok in trouble. Whether we were right or wrong doesn’t come into it, it’s wantok, so that takes precedence over right or wrong.
It’s going to be an interesting couple of weeks now, when Keithie gets back and finds out. I’ll have to chase up the Minister for Environment and push for National Heritage Status for the Gardens to take it out of all the fingers that are involved, it’s an insane system here, well, probably not insane, but it can be very shortsighted in not acknowledging shortcomings and problems.
David tried explaining about the overtime today, and called me in to explain it better, there aren’t the words in pijin to explain exactly what we are intending to do. It still took me an hour to go over it, before everyone understood, then we had one of the night security guys arrive drunk, and disrupted the whole thing by accusing David of just stealing money from them all by not paying overtime rates. So it went back to the start again, and Tumi got sent out of the meeting, he was really drunk, and not listening, but still managed to get everyone confused.
I think everyone understands now, that we are not paying penal rates anymore, but we will give them equivalent time off during the week for time worked at weekends and night time. It’s either that, or we have to start laying off people, and neither David nor I want that to happen. We’ve got a good crew, who know what to do with minimal supervision, and when more work comes in we’ll need all of them for it.
3 days of hot dry weather and it’s been the Invasion of the Cockroaches! Opened the cupboard when I got home to see what I could throw together for dinner, and several large brown cockroaches went scuttling under over and through the assorted tins and containers. The cupboards got a swift clean out, and a good spray of crawling insect spray, and an hour later there’s a lot of dead cockies on the floor under the cupboards. Now I need another tin of spray, I got a bit carried away with it. Effective though. Another reason to get good well sealed containers, the damn things get everywhere. And they are too big for the geckos to eat.
I might try and catch a couple of green tree lizards to let loose in the house to keep the cockies under control, then I’ll need a small python to keep the lizards in check, it could get to be a zoo.
The truck seems to be over it’s temperamental hissy fit of last weekend, apart from taking a few minutes to start now, and when it does finally fire up, it belches a lovely big smoke ring out the exhaust. Mostly white, so it’s unburnt diesel, better than black oil smoke.
We’re having continual power cuts again this week, every day at work, from 11am till 12, then from 2pm till 3pm, and when I got home tonight, no power till nearly 7pm, then only for 15 minutes, off again till 9pm. I wouldn’t have minded, but it means I’ll be without hot water till the morning, and there’s only a trickle coming from the cold tap. So much for solar heating, it’s connected to the power supply somehow, I think when the power goes out, it closes a valve somewhere which causes an airlock in the system. I’m used to it now, but it’s still annoying. Especially when it’s hot and I’m looking forward to a shower.
Saturday 18th
Longest power cut so far, nearly all day, and still off at 8pm. The fridge was nicely defrosted when I got home, luckily there isn’t a great deal in it, although my diminishing supply of crab sticks had to be used up tonight, I’m more upset at not having any ice for a cold drink.
We’ve got half the tubs down the median strip done, digging out about 4 – 6 inches of the soil in them, and replacing it with our custom made compost, and giving them a good 30 litres of water to wash it all in. A lot of the crew turned up, Jennifer, Sepa, Jocelyn, Kennedy, Andrew, Emory, Suzie, so they seem to have accepted the new system for overtime.
It was hot coming down the main street through Honiara. No wind, and the tar seal was reflecting and holding the heat. 48 tubs to go, we ran out of compost, so that’s a job for next weekend once we mulch another lot of compost through the mulcher.
I’ve had 5 cold showers so far since I got home, trying to cool down, I’d trade for a steady breeze at the moment. There’s no air movement and it’s humid, and still. A bit like a sauna run by a heat freak, without any water to cool down with.
If the power is still off in the morning I’m going into work, to post this, and soak up the air-conditioning in the office.
I found some Coke Zero in 300ml cans today, $6 each, and to hell with the expense, I had to have 3, because the first two seemed to vanish between my mouth and the rest of me. You sweat a lot here, and no matter how much you drink, there’s not much makes it all the way through.
Pic is the bus stop on Mendana in the centre of Honiara
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