3rd March

The storm that arrived Saturday night lingers on still. Monday night was the worst of it so far, trees blown down, power lines broken, roads flooded, rivers overflowing. Being in a slight hollow and protected from the worst of it I didn’t really notice anything, other than the rain, till I went out yesterday.

It turned into another one of those days when I felt by the end of it I should really have stayed in bed, or gone walkabout, or anything. As is becoming usual, the little truck refused to start, and Telekom weren’t co-operative with letting phone calls or texts go through, so it wasn’t till nearly midday that Tiffany and Adrian turned up here. Someone has “borrowed” the truck batteries, again, and it took a while to get things organised. My only bitch about it was that Tiff and Adrian spent the morning collecting everyone and taking them to Ranandi before coming to get me, which made it nearly 11am. As I said to Tiff, if they’d collected me first, we could have had new batteries and been on our way instead of Adrians plan of collecting everyone, then trying to sort out the day. As it was, by the time we got the batteries into the truck, it was nearly 12.30, and everyone had given up waiting at Ranandi and gone home.

The weather didn’t help, it started off almost fine, as in not really raining, but got progressively worse during the day. According to Solomon Island Weather, we have a full week of this, and into the weekend.

We still haven’t any water supply, from letters in the Solomon Star, it has been 4 weeks now for most of Honiara to be without water, and the best SIWA can do is have an intermittent supply operating to some areas, and as you might have guessed already, my little settlement isn’t one of them. My collection of worldly possessions is increasing, I now have 4 10 litre buckets that work as my daily water supply, one for a wash, one has clothes soaking, one for cooking and drinking, and a spare for when it is raining too heavily to go outside and refill them all. Although I’ve been putting the empties on the steps and letting the rain fill them instead of using the water tank.

The weather isn’t helping with food prices either, everything has gone up by a couple of dollars in the market, due to the fields and gardens being flooded, and lack of transport for a lot of the growers to get to the markets.

We have another meeting with the Japanese Consul today, trying to convince her that the Nursery will still go ahead, despite the obstructions from Dept Lands, Council and Forestry. I’m becoming extremely jaded about the whole thing, well, a continuation of how I felt before I went to New Zealand. It all revolves around personalities, or people abusing their position, or in some cases, just because the person involved has wantok who have a grudge. We have all of our funding through, other the Japanese Grass Roots, which gives us more than enough to get started, if we had the lease signed and agreed at Ranandi.

For anyone interested in the ongoing AGW doomsday IPCC bs, Willis Eschenbach has had a couple of excellent posts in www.wattsupwiththat.com, all well worth reading, including his reply to Judith Curry.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/25/judith-i-love-ya-but-youre-way-wrong/

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/14/the-thermostat-hypothesis/

http://www.climateconversation.wordshine.co.nz/2010/02/whats-the-problem/#more-3837

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/28/sense-and-sensitivity/#more-16830

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/01/a-tornado-free-february-first-time-ever/

Photos will be included soon, of various things, once I know that I won’t lose internet connection halfway through uploading, as has been happening all week so far. I get a touch annoyed I lose the connection for the 5th or 6th time, always just before an upload is complete.