Saturday 22nd August

Had an interesting day Friday, well, the morning anyway. Tiffany and I had a 2 hour course for the gardeners at the Governor Generals house on Kola Ridge that Tiffany had organised. Beautiful grounds, a few acres of trees, buildings, gardens, tennis courts, swimming pool etc, all over looking the strait out to the Florida Islands and over to Malaitia. The gardeners appreciated us going, I took a lot of handouts from the Level 2 Course, and we spent 30 minutes roughly going through each one.

It was good going there, the gardeners have all done the level 1 course, but never attempted Level 2 so there are some big gaps in their knowledge at the moment. I found a large hibiscus next to the area we were using, with purple mottled leaves, so that gave me the intro to nutrients and fertilisers. After a couple of hours just straight talking and question and answer, we went on a tour of the gardens, and discussed tree pruning, fertilisers, sprays, insect and fungus infestations. There is a lot of both there, so I left a list of sprays, fertilisers and instructions for them to follow up with.

We had a meeting with Keithie in the afternoon, still nothing settled with the Gardens, but we are getting a container moved down there, and put next to the Nursery as a back up for when it all goes flop, if it does. We’re going to stay in the existing office until we are actually evicted, on the possession is 9/10 of the law argument. If we move out now, it just gives Forestry the win without actually putting anything in writing, which is what I want.

There are more and more letters into the Star this week about the politicians handout, the PM Sikura is denying any knowledge, despite him having picked the 2 MPs to be part of the Parliamentary Entitlements Committee. It doesn’t help that one is the Finance Minister, Rini, who was the cause of the riots in 2006 until he stood down, and as he was PM for 4 days, he would get a free new house, and car, plus full pension for life with the new changes.

Some of the letters are starting to mention the 2006 riots, and it is quite possible the same thing will happen again if the PEC recommendations aren’t cancelled and rethought. It is certainly getting interesting.

The little garden area on the main road shops I posted the pictures of a week or so ago, that no one wants to pay the maintenace bill for is now a complete rubbish dump. Even the local shops are dumping their rubbish in it now. Bags of waste, food scraps, litter it is all piling up. The local shops there are all owned by “new” Chinese owners, as opposed to the local Chinese in and around Chinatown, and the “new” ones won’t get involved in doing anything in and around town. As my sister noticed, they just sweep out their shops onto the footpath, and leave it, or set fires along the street burning any rubbish. Tiffany and I approached the shopkeepers there last week, but they all said it wasn’t their responsibility, and they weren’t going to help pay for cleaning it up. So we’ve just left it. I’ll go in tomorrow and get some more photos.

It’s been hot and muggy all day, till about 6pm, when the rain suddenly started with no warning. It just fell out of the sky like a bath tub being tipped over. We’ve had an hour of it so far, and it’s almost stopped now, but there are brief bursts of heavy stuff in between the rain.

Rose sent my welding helmet, just in case Don Bosco have a new course starting, so I’ll be ready if they do. I think my sister is clearing out Mothers place and sending all sorts of stuff to me instead of just junking it. I’ve now got a woven basket, as if that isn’t available here, and another bath mat. And a couple of packets of biscuits. Much appreciated.

I did end up with the yoghurt maker, I’m not sure how much use I’ll get out of it. Wings has the yoghurt mix, at $48.50 per 1 litre packet. I doubt I’ll be buying it. That is expensive yoghurt in any language. Or currency.

You can get yoghurt in the some of shops, imported, at $22 for 120ml Yoplait cartons, but it is dependent on when the containers come in, so it’s not always there. I don’t buy it anyway, too far out of my price range.

The Bulk Shop had potatoes and carrots today! $12 per kilo for potatoes, $14 per kilo for carrots, and $48 per kilo for brocolli. Onions at $14 per kilo and heads of cabbage at $54 each. I stuck with a few potatoes and a couple of carrots. I did notice a few of the ex-pat and RAMSI people stocking up on the veg though, they can afford it. It really makes the difference between the local people and the imported overseas people so noticeable. I doubt any of the work crew could afford to buy anything like that, I know how I feel when I see it, and know it is really out of my price range, same with the fruit in Wings, apples at $20 each, oranges $25 each.

Nevermind, I can get fresh pawpaw for $3 - $5 each, pineapples for $15, and bananas for $10 a bunch, so life isn’t all that hard. I’d kill for a good roast leg of lamb though, or even a decent meal of seafood. That is still way out of my price range.

Friday at the Gardens turned into a full on Zoo day. By the time we got back from Keithies there would have been 200 teenagers there, in varying stages of drunkedness, or stoned. Possibly more than 200, that was all we could see on the lawn area and down by the swimming hole. Judging by the noise from the tracks another 50 or more were up in the trees partying. Tiffany decided it was all just too much, so she rang Central Police Station, told them that there were crowds of drunken school kids in the Gardens, and we locked up and left them to it. I call it Zoo Day because the noise they make reminds of a zoo at feeding time, especially the primate enclosures when all the chimpanzees and others start hooting and calling.