Sunday 22nd August

It must be my week for having a bitch session.

The new truck which has been going really well, while I had control of where and who drove it, came back Thursday afternoon with the passenger window loose in the door frame. Electric window. It didn’t work, so someone helped it down by pushing the window down, which bent the lift bracket and dropped the window glass off the holder.

There is a button on the drivers door frame which locks the windows, it had probably been pushed to see what happens, then as there is no obvious effect, it has been left locked. Which stops the window buttons from working. So the window got forced open.

I’ve just spent the afternoon in the rain getting it apart, it looks like I’ll have to take the guides out as well from the top of the frame to install it properly, trying to get the window lift grip on inside the door frame is next to impossible. The guide grips the window with 2 rubber strips, that are impossible to get on inside the frame.

Other than that, it’s been a quiet weekend. We are down to two main contenders for the Prime Ministers position now, Derek Sikua and Synder Rini are out of contention, which hopefully means it may be a smooth and quiet announcement on Wednesday.

The Police Commander declared a public holiday for Wednesday, hoping to keep on top of any trouble. It is a funny place. There was a person arrested Thursday night plastering posters around Honiara calling for a revolution, if their candidate wasn’t selected. There were a few other things on the posters as well apparently, which would have caused a disturbance easily.
It must be one of the few places I know where a riot can be caused by someone writing graffiti calling for one group to be excluded, or making a slur against one of the other provinces. The last local one was caused by someone writing “Malaitans go Home” on a building wall. That caused close to 400 people to rampage through Honiara breaking shop windows and beating people up.

Everything we need to complete the Nursery is now sitting in Brisbane waiting for a container to come up here. It’s going to be a hectic couple of weeks once it all gets here. The shade cloth should be fairly easy, we’ll have the posts and wires in place and ready, so just roll out and clip in place.

The irrigation is going to be the part that needs a bit of time to install. We’ve got permission to tap into the SIWA line finally, so that goes ahead this week. I’m getting four 2,500 gallon water tanks, initially connected to the mains, but eventually when we get the building up, I’ll use the mains as a back up to the rain.

We’re having an official opening for the Nursery side in mid October, the German Ambassador etc coming out to see where their money has gone. And the EU Director as well to see their truck with the logos I designed. I made up a design for us as well, to go on the front of the trucks, Solomon Island flag colours and stars, with SEB inset.

We still have the gateway and the fence across the paddock to install, but with only 11 crew left things aren’t getting done as fast as they should be. Young David who has been doing a terrific job in Commonwealth Ave cleaning, decided he needed a holiday and walked off, so we have been juggling people for the past 2 weeks to keep Commonwealth Ave cleaned until we can find someone else to take care of it permanently.