I’m finally ready to dispose of Adrian, one way or the other. He heard us talking about Keithies “request” for us to cut the wage bill and put some of the crew off, and took it on himself to go to Keithie and tell her that we only need 12 people at the Gardens, and we could put 8 people off to cut the number from 20 to 12. He didn’t take into account that in the 20 is Tiffany, Shirleyta, David, in the office, Jennifer and Imelda in the Nursery, Andrew doing the tool maintenance in the workshop every day, so his idea would cut our actual hands on crew to 7 including Emory the driver.
On that number, there is no way we could do the amount of work we have in a week, let alone the month. Bloody idiot. And to cap it all off, David from Rove Prison called up, and admitted that they are unable to guarantee Adrians safety while he is working there with the prisoners because of his attitude towards them. They’re all life sentence people, a few for murder, some from the troubles for sedition and guerrilla activities. And Adrian is abusing them. Anyway, he’s been barred from the prison job, I’m happier, Sepka is happy, the prison staff are happy, and the prisoners are working well again.
I’ve got 3 live coconut crabs scuttling about on my porch, they’ll live quite happily there for a while, so long as I throw them some coconut every now and then. Good burglar alarms too, you don’t want to be treading on one, the claws can rip a coconut apart, so toes and feet will be like soft jelly.
There’s not a lot of meat in them, I feel like letting them go in the bush somewhere to live, the amount of work required to get a few tablespoons of meat doesn’t seem appropriate to kill one for. Crayfish are a different story though, lots of meat, and easier to get at.
We’ve had a good couple of days at work, Andrew, David and I, stripping down the motors on the grass cutters, and rebuilding them. It drives Adrian crazy watching us, he’s still against showing the guys how to service and repair the machines. As far as I’m concerned, it goes with my job, advise, teach, demonstrate. Anyway, the guys can strip a machine down to the cylinders, assemble, check and get it going now, so I feel that is a plus. I’ll get a few more tools to do it properly with next week, and a ring compressor, then we can do a full strip down and reassembly.
This way all we have to pay for is the parts, gaskets etc, although I showed Andrew how to make a gasket with a small ball peen hammer and some thick paper today. All the little tricks I’ve learnt over the years doing maintenance, Andrew and David, just look once, they have it straight away. We had fun tuning the motor today, the micro filter on the jet was blocked, not fully, just enough to let some fuel through for starting and idling, but not enough to run. David was all for stripping the entire motor down again, till I convinced him it was a fuel problem, not mechanical. He’d never touched the carburettors before, so there went an hour or so stripping it apart, not that there is much to them. He didn’t believe me when I said the filter looked clogged, well, it was hard to say, very fine holes, but I figured it must be. We had another old carb so we swapped parts around, reassembled, put it all back together, and then had a petrol head time tuning it in. A lot of noise and smoke from the excess oil in the crankcase for a while, and another machine ready for work.
Graduation Ceremony for the students on Monday, it’s a real big thing here, family, newspapers, even though it’s only Level 2 Certificate, it means a job and a chance for further education. I hope they all do well, it’s been a fun class, and a really good bunch of people to work with. We’re having a full on barbque on the lawn, from what I gather, it’s everything from fish, meat, taro, salads, rice, fruit, cassava. It’ll be good whatever happens, they always have good functions and food enough to make sure everyone gets fed.
I had “words” with David today, he won’t take any money for Mums present, and now he’s got some handwoven baskets from his home for me as well. I keep trying to tell him I’m only doing what I’m meant to be here for, nothing special, just advise, show, help, but he’s too bloody nice and is really proud of his heritage. I’m really pleased, but it’s not something I expect just for doing my job.
Pics are a green tree lizard, and 2 unidentified spiders
The main thing to eat from the Coconut Crab is not the meat, it's the 'bolo' (balls). My wife insists it's the only good thing about them. They accumulate a mass of coconut 'exudate' in their tail - don't ask me what it is, probably highly gross, but to SI'ers it tastes like coconut and is very tasty - and that is the main thing they often like to eat - unless you get a big one that has lots of meat. They are very slow growers, and anything with less than plenty of meat is probably less than quite a few years old. Hence why they are such an endangered species (not wanting to sound like a lentil munching greeny here... :-)
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