Tuesday 17th November

I should really get out more at the weekend. The football match between the Gualie team and the Malaitan team at Lawson Tama on Saturday had a bit of an upset over a referees decision, which went against the Malaitan team. The ensuing dispute led to the Solomon Island Football Federation Building at Lawson Tama being burnt down, the grandstand was a bit damaged, and everyone went home happy. I haven’t heard of anyone being seriously injured, you don’t see bushknives at the football usually, although that may change. SIFF lost all the trophies, memorabilia, records etc, and the building.

Work remains the same. Although Tiff and I are making headway over the budget issues. We’ve gone from $35,000 a month loss prior to June to $6,000 per month, measured over the past 5 months income/expenditure, and the slope is dropping. It still isn’t perfect, but we are turning it around. On the figures Tiff and I worked on, we should be breaking even by March next year when the new pricing starts being reflected in the income, and the other sources of income like landscaping, plant sales and compost sales are included.

I’ve got all the measurements for the Post Office, I should have been finishing the Commonwealth Street designs today, but I got distracted in the morning, and started the Level 2 class anyway, then by the time we got into town Tiff had another meeting with MID over the payment, I got totally sidetracked with another small job for one of the BJS staff, David came in to tell us about 3 of the crew deciding to wander off and do a couple of private houses lawn cutting instead of the Childrens Park and Rove Police Memorial park, so I’ve written warning letters for them for tomorrow morning, about 2pm I picked up my bag and camera and went out to take photos of the Post Office gardens instead. Add in the usual Telekom internet connection faults, so emails that should have gone to people this morning about quotes/contracts/jobs weren’t sent, and it wasn’t till the afternoon we could get back online to check, it isn’t doing my patience much good.




Post office gardens, it's a bit of a jungle as you can see, bits of everything all thrown in together, I'm clearing it back to bare ground, then Alexandra or Royal palms, with Hibiscus and a few of Kennedys statues with a boulder surround.


No rain for 5 days so far, but there is thunder again in the hills, although the wind is northerly again so it is holding the clouds back away from Honiara. I never thought I’d be welcoming rain, this month has been drier than last year so far, the la nina pattern is settling and holding off the monsoons right across the area, which could make the period after December very interesting, more floods and washouts probably, as the rain finally arrives.

In case I don’t catch up, have a safe trip Libby, and I’ll catch up when you get to Hawaii and settled back in.

Added in, my article got published full page in the Solomon Star Wednesday morning, now I'll wait for Al's Apostles to start abusing me.