For anyone that was wondering what happened to all the curry that was obviously left from Sunday nights dinner, I add more rice to it, then make curry and rice rolls, and freeze them for week day meals when I just can’t be bothered thinking. It’s easier some nights to just open the freezer and put 3 or 4 rolls into the little oven to cook, while I start catching up on the day.
I can get spring roll pastry sheets for $19.50 per pkt of 20, which is enough to clear up the left over curry or stirfry each week, although I did go a bit overboard with the curry this week, and I ran out of pastry, and still have enough for another 12 or so rolls. I don’t usually deep fry them, unless I have one of those grease needed urgently cravings. Then afterwards I remember why I put off having grease or fried food. And I go all holy and sanctimonious and swear off grease/fat/fried food, for about another month.
I’m at the stage with the nursery irrigation system that I really miss civilisation. I’ve got downloads, printouts, a huge folder filled with stuff on the laptop, the only thing I can’t get is prices for anything other than the pipe work. Island Enterprises is great to deal with. “Add a nought” (Phil) really does try to get stuff for you, but it does take time, I’ve still got a bit of western thinking that will have to go. Hoping that he could get stuff for me soon is probably not the best attitude to take into any conversation.
He got called “Add a nought” years back, when he first started Island Enterprises, and was importing everything, as he still does. Then the exchange rate, customs duties, import duties, all the other various charges on goods resulted in everything having a Solomon Dollar price equivalent to just adding a 0 to the overseas price, regardless of country of origin. So whenever anyone wanted to know what something would cost to have imported, Phil would tell them to find out the price overseas and add a nought. And the name stuck. It isn’t quite as bad as that now, although sometimes you have to wonder, but Phil is still known throughout the Solomons as “Add a nought”
But that diversion into Solomon Island naming practise doesn’t help me at the moment. I have a long list of irrigation equipment to price hopefully by Thursday so Tiff and I, well, Tiff mostly, can enter it into the German Embassy Proposal, and get it to them on Friday. I’ve also got the rubbish bins to price, the timber seating, and the pavers for Commonwealth Ave to price, I’m running classes every morning this week, till midday, we’ve lost 2 more staff who have found 5 day week jobs, so the work crew is really down to minimum, only 4 girls left to do the town gardens, and 5 guys to do the median strip and road sweeping, and there is still talking about cutting the staff back further.
Then we have the Post Office revamp starting in 2 weeks, a major cleanup through town the same fortnight the Post Office is being done to get ready for Christmas, and people wonder why Tiff and I are getting a bit touchy lately.
The good bit for the day is that we have 300 Archontophoenix (Alexandra Palms) and some Cycad seed finally in a seed bed. I had Hendry and Josephine learning how to make compost and seed beds this morning with the mulcher, feeding wood chip and stored chicken manure through, and making a seed bed. We’ve had the chicken manure in black rubbish bags for a couple of weeks now, so the initial ammonia burst is gone from it, and it smelt quite nice today, well, ok, you have to be really into horticulture to describe chicken manure as smelling nice, but it didn’t climb up your nostrils and attack your sinus tissues.
Hopefully in a few weeks we should have some palms coming through the bed, which will be a first for SEB, and hopefully it will continue, instead of just going into the bush and digging out plants.
The Cycad seed we cracked open slightly, so it could get water into the seed itself, instead of waiting a few months for the shell to let water permeate through. The Archontophoenix I’ve had soaking since Friday, and with a bit of luck they will have got some moisture through to start the seed. I’ve read about using sulphuric acid to scarify the seed coats, thought about getting some battery acid and trying it, then thought about the staff and the work practises, and decided it would not be a good thing to have around. It is still very much touch and learn society, you can tell people this will kill/maim/wound/turn your toes green, and they will try just to see if it does.
David is still off work, he’s really sick, lung infection, plus ulcers breaking out all over his body now. Trying to get him to go to Hospital, # 9, is a lesson in futility, so I don’t even bother now. Adrian still keeps trying, but as only Adrian can, he starts in at Tiff about not feeding David properly, without considering that he gets as much in a week as she does a month, and his money is just for him. He can be so blind to stuff at times, and if you point it out to him he gets all defensive, or starts in at me for getting my allowance. We don’t tell him about the baking and other stuff that Tiff and I organise between ourselves, it would be another thing he couldn’t understand.
I have the November report to write this week as well, which I’m sure will go down really well, like last months report did, but at least we have some positive things to put into it this time, Post Office, Commonwealth Ave, which Tiff has been responsible for without Keithie. Also ANZ have agreed to the increase, and picked up the corner gardens around the roundabout, so that is now worth $4,000 a month from January. Ok, there is a lot of work needed, MID want us to trim one of the corners down, the Hibiscus have grown well over head height and cars turning into the Chinatown Road can’t see pedestrians coming through, so there are a few interesting moments there. But it means a lot more cuttings for Jennifer and Imelda to propagate from, so by the time we get the new Nursery started it will be nearly full. Well, ok, not full, I’ve got a huge area now to play with, 3 x 50 metre layout beds, 8 metres, 6 metres and 5 metres wide, with another 1/3 of the area to develop as needed in stage 3.
The rains are still delayed, it has been the driest November for a while now, which if past weather patterns mean anything, December through to March are going to be floods and landslide time again. I read back through this to February and March when I arrived, and the amount of rain we had then compared to now is really apparent. And half the bridges and roads that were washed away then still haven’t been repaired yet.
The Honiara City Council have increased the fines for littering to $1,000 up to $10,000, for shopkeepers, but they don’t have any staff to police it, so the gardens by the Chemist at City Centre are still turning into a rubbish tip every day. The girls picked up 37 bags of rubbish out of the Childrens Playground yesterday, Jacinta was there today on her own, and still collected another 28 bags. This is with rubbish bins in the park and outside the gates and fence. The average from each roundabout is 12 bags of rubbish a day, I’m always amazed at how much people can dispose of just by throwing stuff out the car windows as they are driving through the roundabouts.
We collect over 200 bags of rubbish a week just from the gardens we maintain, the betel nut stalls everywhere are a major cess pit through town, but as most of them have wantok working for the Council or Police Force, they don’t get moved on. So the spitting, betel nut shells, and assorted rubbish collect around those areas. I’m past the horrified stage about it, it’s something that you have to learn to live with here, it will change, but slowly, which is what we’re working towards with SEB, and the Commonwealth Ave upgrade. I’m tempted to do what Steve told me about Port Moresby, where they hire gangs of Rascals to patrol the streets, and they keep the fines they impose on people for littering. Not that you or anyone is likely to argue with a dreadlocked kanak holding a bushknife in your face and telling you there is a $20 fine for dropping that coke can, or bit of paper. There are enough young guys looking for something to do in the Central Markets, I’d be giving 4 or 6 of them a stretch of street or road, and telling them it has to be kept clean, and they can keep whatever they earn from fining people for littering. I’d even supply the bush knives.
Kiwibank rang me today, they finally got through and all I need now is to remember to have my passport with me tomorrow in the office, and hopefully my account will get unlocked. After nearly 6 months. And several emails, letters and visits from my sister. I know I could have rung them, but at $15 per minute or $25 on mobile, from the time the connection starts ringing, and knowing how slow help centres are, I didn’t feel like wasting money to be ringing several times, as I know the connection gets broken from here for overseas calls roughly every 3 minutes, so you have to ring again, and again, and again. And the first minute has all the charges on it, the next ones are just flat rate.
We have the phone connected at Ranandi, it rang today, now all we need is for SIEA to find a meter for the board and we’re shifting back.
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