Tuesday 15th December

Say what I like about Adrian, at times I really like the guy. I’ve got the loan of his blender for a month while he’s back in Australia, nice big grunty 600W Sunbeam with a heavy glass jug, good motor. It’ll cost me a bottle of chilli sauce but well worth it.

I’m still without water in the house, 4th week coming up now, although I’m hopeful of it finally getting to me this morning. The house is almost level with the header tank, maybe 10’ difference to the top of the header tank over on the hill, so until the tank fills all the way I have no water reaches me. Everyone below me in the compound had water last night, I did get my hopes up when my neighbour below me said it was on, but the tank still isn’t full enough.

The Solomon Star is full of AGW Copenhagen still, and the $20 billion we’re all going to get from the western countries. When you read through the fine print, I’m wondering where the $20 billion is going to come from once you close 80% of the Wests manufacturing ability to meet totally unrealistic CO2 levels, shut down electricity generation, and drive the developed countries back to feudal times.

Plus prevent 3rd world countries from developing any further, by capping their production to stop CO2 rising. Just to make Al Gore and Goldman Sachs richer with Carbon Trading.

Any country that has politicians stupid enough to go along with the whole insane idea deserves everything that happens. I see Australia has finally got some politicians with sense, and the next election there will see some changes, I feel sorry for Britain, sold out to the looney left and facing a huge decline in living standards. And don’t get me started on how Wind and Solar Generation will save us. Neither of them generate sufficient power to run any industries, so you still need back up Hydro/Coal/Oil/Nuclear stations to keep a manufacturing base going, but wait, isn’t that the whole idea, shut down all the nasty productive places and transfer all the wealth to the developing countries? There won’t be any wealth to transfer by the time the looney left lentil munchers have finished, we’ll all be suffering.

Add in Solar Cycle 24 still not co-operating and we’re back to the cool part of the 60 year cycle starting, the Pacific Decahedral Oscillation turned negative in 2007, which means this years El Nino will be the last bit of warming for the next 30 years and we’ve still got stupid bloody idiots that think we can stop it happening.

At times you have to despair at the sheer lunacy and hysteria of it all.

We started at the Post Office yesterday, I’m always amazed at how efficiently the crew work together. It looks like a swarm of termites attacking something, people everywhere with bush knives, spades, shovels, in a totally unco-ordinated pattern, then 2 hours later it’s all done, and everyone is looking for more work. I was thinking it would take a day at least to dig out all the shrubs and overgrown plants along Mendana, but 2 hours later there was a large heap, and they were starting to break up the old soil and get it ready to truck away.

We might actually make money on this job, even if there is a hiccup and it takes all the time Tiffany and I calculated.

Still frustrated trying to get prices and quotes for everything here. I’ve got Commonwealth Street still half complete, nothing back from Island Enterprises for the Nursery Irrigation, the US Embassy Port Moresby Funding Application has to be completed and to them by the 15th January, I need prices for text books for that application, I’m trying to get all the teaching resources paid for with it, too many things going on and everyone is thinking about Christmas instead of work.

Further to my ongoing battle trying to get a mobile phone to work here. Solomon Telekom have been the only providor since whenever, and as is normal with any monopoly what you get is all you get, and they charge accordingly. So with the mobile network, they oversubscribed and sold more sim cards than they have capacity to carry, and are still selling sim cards, at SBD$400, and to overcome the capacity shortfall they periodically block whole ranges of numbers. Which as you may have already guessed includes mine at present. All I get now is “Emergency Calls Only” message. Took it back to Telekom yesterday, I’m getting to know the staff there rather well at the help desk, and they promised to have it working “soon”. If you recall my bit the other day about Solomon Island Time Definitions, you’ll understand the sinking feeling I experienced on hearing “soon”.

I’ll go back again today, I might get a “maybe today” or at the worst, “maybe tomorrow”. Which is very close to “soon”.

Digicell are opening up here next year, which may be a blessing or not. I’m picking Telekom will make it so expensive to change over that any benefit will be negated by the cost, although the other side is that so many people will swap over, Digicell will be swamped like Telekom is at present, which will leave Telekom with spare capacity, oh the endless permutations that could be drawn up.

Joe from www.joepastry.com called in here the other day, he’s got one of the best baking and everything associated websites I’ve found, please visit, there is a wealth of information written extremely well and interestingly. Better than this collection of off the top of my head stuff at 5am in the morning. Although he did offer to promote this drivel on his website, I’m considering it, although I’d have to go back through and edit out some bits before it got too popular.

We’re still waiting for the rains to come, it clouds over, we get terrific thunder and lightning storms, then it all fades away and the Weather Coast get all the rain again. The cyclone season is starting, one off the coast of Australia, and one out in the Pacific between here and Rarotonga which may come this way. I’m just waiting for the AGW crowd to start with the “man made” reasons for them. As if we haven’t had cyclones here before, and always will. Part of the fun of living in the tropics. Or close to them, I remember going on Christmas Holidays in New Zealand in the early 60’s to Coopers Beach Northland, and every Christmas there would be a cyclone that would try to rip the tent apart for a few days.

I think that is where a lot of the looney left lose out, they aren’t old enough to remember back more than 30 years to the last period of colder weather, they think it’s always been warm and pleasant. I know the Urban Heat Island effect changes a lot of local weather patterns, but even so, Otahuhu in the 50’s and 60’s would have frosts that covered the glasshouses with a slick of ice that hung on for most of the mornings, and there is nothing as satisfying as walking across the lawn hearing the grass crunch and snap under your feet. Ok, so when it thawed your footprints were all there on show till the spring and the grass grew back, but still fun.

And the fogs that blanketed every sound out. Nothing like being an old fart and reminiscing. And now I’m living where it’s always 30*C, the lifestyle is certainly laidback, almost comatose at times, and trying to get anything done is an exercise in frustration.