Saturday 31st October

My apologies, the week has been rather hectic, I'll have time spare over the weekend, and catch up Monday morning.

Sunday 25th October

I found PF Network internet cafe Sat morning, and successfully lost half the day there, ok, Zoe helped, I had to leave though, it is $10 per 30 minutes, and I’m a skinflint, as it was, it still cost me $35 but it was well worth it. I didn’t get to the Global Warming Outdoor gathering at the Cultural Village Centre, it started raining, and I thought as much as I’d love to go and cause arguments, I didn’t need to be getting wet doing it.

After I cut CO2 levels to 350, I’ll part the Pacific Ocean, solve the Israel/Palestine conflict, sort out the USA financial problem, and give everyone a chicken in a pot for dinner. Blathering idiots that came up with that scam. It has no show of succeeding, but to follow their arguments and recommendations will put every developed country back 30 years, and prevent developing countries from lifting their standards of living. Malthusian population control socialistic world government idiots. They’ll be first up against the wall when I’m King, followed by the Politicians, Lawyers and any sock and sandal wearing lentil munching looney left wing green party people I missed the first time.

We’ve got a busy week ahead, I have to send a crew to the Memorial Gardens first thing to give it a makeover, lawns, trimming etc before Tuesday morning, for a ceremony being held there, sort out who we are going to send to Commonwealth Avenue for the week, I think we might make a roster for it, so everyone gets a 5 day week in turn doing it, although I think it may turn into a bigger job once all the other business see what we are doing there, although the Chinese owned shops won’t be part of it, miserly robbing bastards. Then there are still plants and fences to be shifted from the Gardens from the old nursery, plus the orchids, we have 6 school kids from Woodford School coming for 2 weeks work experience from Tuesday, I stupidly told Keithie earlier today that I’ll start the last course for the year next week, well, it’s not stupid, but as if I haven’t got enough to do now.

Tiffany and I will be in the BJS office each morning this week checking email, SIEA and Telekom have both said power and phone lines will be connected this week, I’m taking the Samsung mobile into Telekom tomorrow to see if they can get it to work, if not I’ll put it in the box marked junk in the spare room. I know not having the pin code isn’t going to help, and it’s too light to use as a fishing sinker.

I’m regretting having the Vodafone mobile drowned, it was easy to use, and worked. And it had a camera.

I had a good morning at the market again, surprising how the prices drop a bit when they know you are a “local” and there every week, it’s only taken me 9 months to get to that stage. Handing out prints of the photos I take every now and then helps as well. $5 off the price for bananas, $2 off the price for pawpaw, and a free bunch of spring onions if I bought 2. There were a few tourists there with a guide from the Tourism office, trying to work out the prices converted back to US$. They’d been to Central Market yesterday judging by the comments about the difference between Kukum Fish Market and Central Market, less rubbish and friendlier people.

Yesterdays rain didn’t stop till early this morning, everything is all washed clean, most of the roadsides edges have been flooded away, so briefly it looked quite tidy and clean. The big tree on the corner of the Ba’hai property dropped a branch yesterday in the rain, huge lump of timber, took out a tree under it, and damaged another mango tree as well. We may get the clean up job, but it will take a bigger chainsaw than the little one we have.

I’m going to make up a set of flash cards for Jennifer and Imelda, and me, with the latin names, and common and island names of the plants on, so we can all get them in our memory. Especially with the fruit and nut species here, every Island has a different common name for the same tree, it gets really confusing at times.

Friday 23rd October

What a fun day it turned into. We were hoping to be out of the office and away without too much fuss, but it turned into a stand up confrontation with Fred and Clement from Forestry getting upset with us stripping everything out of the office, desks, chairs, telephones, cables, internet connections everything. David really impressed me this morning during the whole thing. He had Clement and Fred almost in his face, fists clenched, shouting abuse at him, and he never raised his voice, unfolded his arms, just let them shout and threaten him. We’ll be in the Solomon Star again tomorrow, Fred got them down to show them what SEB were doing, and making it impossible for Forestry to work in the office, the fact that the phone/internet connections were in SEB’s name, didn’t mean anything to him.

It helped pass the morning anyway. For the past 8 months during all this Fred has been coming down to the Gardens with a self satisfied smirk on his face, but not today. If he’d been white, his face would have been purple with rage, as it was, he’s from Western Province, and is one of the blacker skinned Melanesians, even so, he was blacker than normal. Tiffany and David, and me, were still laughing this afternoon when we finished work.

Adrian turned up after it was all over, and wanted to know everything as usual. He didn’t believe that David just stood there, and never lost his cool. And David was doing really well explaining, till he said to Adrian, “I am David, I’m a fucking civilised man”

After I stopped laughing, I have to admit he couldn’t have said a better phrase, it broke all the tension of the past few months, and the rest of the day was just a relief for everyone, knowing we were out of all the crap and conflict.

I know I shouldn’t be wishing Forestry trouble, spite is such a petty thing to indulge in, but...............

John and Patrick from Woodford School called in later in the day, to make sure the Cross Country could still go ahead on the 5th November. I’ve told Clement about it, and walked him over the tracks yesterday showing him the repairs needed after the rains, washouts, holes, fallen trees, that we haven’t done the last week or two. John looked over the lawn area, and said it was a disgrace, which it really is now, we haven’t touched anything for about 3 weeks now, since Forestry got all belligerent. John is going to hold the Cross Country, and if the Gardens aren’t up to the standard we always had them in 2 weeks, he is going to make sure the Solomon Star knows.

We picked up 2 more contracts today as well, for Pacific Casino, the one I mentioned a few posts back, and Civic Centre Gardens as well. Keithie sent Pacific Casino the newspaper clipping with a contact attached, and a note saying “It’s about time you signed this”. It was returned today, signed with a cheque for the next month attached. We also have a fulltime street cleaner for Commonwealth Ave, paid for, it’s the street at Point Cruz with the Lime Lounge, and BJS Agencies, and the US Consulate in it. The fact that Keithie is the US Consul, with her office there in her husbands building, BJS Agencies, might have had something to do with it, but who cares, they are paying, and we get someone employed 5 days a week and it starts getting some of the town cleaned up.

The Childrens Park and the Police Memorial Park are going to be sponsored by HK Logistics, enough for us to put someone there full time everyday, which will help stop the graffiti, and rubbish being dumped there.

Keithie has finally accepted that the pricing for the roundabouts has been too low, and we are increasing it in 2 stages, from $1,000 per month to $1250 for next year, then up to what I want, $1500 after that.

The next few months are going to be tight for us, but we’re out of all the crap and Government Departmental infighting, and on a site that has everything we need, out of Honiara, away from the main road, and a good site to set up on once we get the lease and tenure sorted.

We have funding coming from the German Embassy, the EU Non State Actors Fund, and Chie at the Japanese Consul has told us to re-apply for the Nursery Funding again by March next year once we have a signed lease agreement with Hasting-Deering. It’s just getting through the next few months. And keeping the work crew together.

Tiffany and I spent the afternoon setting up the office container with the office desks. I’ll put a false wall in the end, with a door and the airconditioner, I may use the security door we had at the Gardens, although it will negate the aircon, ok, change that.

I’ve been impatient to do something the past 9 month, now I can’t wait to actually get started with a proper nursery that will be ours with no outside politics involved.


Steve agreed that yes I will have to write up a whole new Project Proposal for VSA, and that he would ignore any bad language expressed by me during the next few weeks while I do so. There are probably 1,000 other things I would prefer to do, watching geckos, counting the leaves falling off the breadfruit trees, trimming nostril hair, but it shouldn’t take too much time to write up. I’ve written proposals for courses and training schools, it’s just more of the same, and actually sitting down and doing it.

Friday 23rd October.

There may be a break in transmission after this. We’re moving everything to Ranandi today, well, 99% is there already, it’s just the office desks and computers left here now, and they’ll be taken out this afternoon. We haven’t got power or telekom connected yet, that may take a few days, I’ll try to get into one of the netcafes in town, but neither of them are open after 12 on Saturday. Steve has found a couple of wireless hotspots in town, outside King Solomon Hotel, and by the British High Commission that are unsecured, so I may park up for a while there to try.

Wednesday was a shambles, Tiffany needed a file urgently for the Auditors, and naturally it was at Ranandi, in a carton, in the container. We found it, but it took a while. Imelda and Jennifer have got everything sorted with the temp set up, plants all sorted into varieties, shade area set up.

Thursday I took a mental health day and stayed home. Mainly because I don’t do walking in the rain to work in the mornings. Tiffany knows to send the truck for me if I’m needed, so there isn’t any problem. Apart from which, it was the first day since Monday I had water in the house, so I made the most of it, and got my washing done, floors mopped, had a 30 minute shower, cleaned all the kitchen up, and spent the afternoon baking and making curry and pita bread. And a double garlic loaf.

It rained all day, which took a lot of the dust and rubbish away, and filled my water tank, although I don’t use it very often, just for when the house water system isn’t working like this week. Steve is talking about getting me a pressure pump system I can couple up to the house to take care of the lack of water. Getting a pot full of water from the rain tank outside is a pita at times. And I’m too cheap to go buying a water container to have inside.

Hopefully Monday will be a better start, we will be all at Ranandi, and things can only get better from here on.

Oh, I found out what system Clement has on his laptop, Vista, and I’m very pleased I never kept it on this one, and reverted back to XP. Going from 98se to XP was easy, after looking at Vista, I’m pleased I didn’t keep it, and Win7 looks good from what I’ve seen and read of it so far.

Tuesday 20th October

Happy Birthday Mel, Hope you had a good day.

The container finally arrived today at Ranandi, the 9.30am delivery time stretched to 1.30pm, but we’re all used to that now here. Adrian turned up to supervise, I held off strangling him again, but I’ve noticed I don’t get as riled with him lately, it’s more that I just don’t care what he does now, I’ll come along after and fix it up, but it’s not worth the stress trying to deal with him. I actually like him, but not to work with.





Tiffany and I are meant to be moving into the office at BJS agencies, but we are both thinking that once we are in there, any action on the Ranandi site will stop, and the chances of getting the container wired and set up as an office will be put on the far back burner, with the forever promise that once we have some spare money it will get done. I’ve got a meeting with Keithie for Tiffany and I this Friday morning, I’ve cut the agenda to the bare basics, Tiffany and the course at USP, done over with, move on, then a date to have the container wired up, and when have we got a meeting with Hasting-Deering about the land at the rear of the site. I already know the last one, Jason is back from Brisbane Monday, so hopefully by Wednesday we’ll have some form of lease on the property and can start getting it built up.
My mind has struck a huge blank space with the VSA report. I’ve filled it out and sent to Steve, but I know I have to write a whole new project proposal, with objectives, indicators etc. I’ll leave that till the weekend and my mind is clear of all the other crap we are dealing with at the moment.




Clement from Forestry that is working in the office with us now while we are shifting is fairly typical of most Solomon Island middle management. Nice guy, easy to get on with, but has no understanding of computers, and more importantly, internet. He had a 4gb thumbstick he was trying to open today, and said that his computer said it had a virus on it. What does that mean, and how can he open his files. I asked if he had any antivirus programme, and got a blank look, then if he had a firewall, same response.

Took his thumbdrive, plugged into the laptop and ran my Norton over it. It had 2 keylogger exe files, and a logstealer exe file on it. After explaining what they were, he decided the files on the thumbdrive weren’t needed anyway, I cleaned the exe files off, well Norton did, then opened the drive to check the files, but he said he had them on the main drive, so could I just reformat the drive.

Did that, then spent most of the afternoon installing AVG and trying to find his windows firewall and turn it on. He’s running some version of Windows I’ve never seen, it could be Millenium, and stuff is not where it should be. He has Norton installed, but Forestry have never paid for the subscription so it is about 5 years out of date.

It is fairly common here for puters to have viruses, Steve warned me before I arrived, even the 2 office computers we have, well, Tiffany uses, were full of crap when I arrived, popups all over the place, some strange stuff showing up, corrupted files etc. I’ve got AVG installed on both, plus Spybot search and Destroy, and put the Firewalls on to always on mode. People here just don’t realise that not everything on the internet is as honest as they are. Same with internet scams.

I found out last week Tiffany has been writing to a poor girl in a refugee camp in Liberia, whose father was killed by rebels and all her money (US$12.5 Million dollars) is being held by some bank that won’t let her get it without some foreign persons help. I had some fun with that, showed Tiffany Scamwarners, and 419eater, then showed her how to find headers in the emails so she could track where they were coming from. Then she said she had a Lawyer in the UK that was helping, so that lead to a website I’ll have to report for killing.

The ip’s in both cases were from Owerri in Nigeria, and Tiffany is having fun with the scam letters now, I don’t know if she’s replying, but I know she’s been busy this afternoon tracking where they are coming from. I kept hearing, “You faker, you’re in Nigeria/Ghana and Warren, where is Burkina Faso?”

I wrote up a long article a while back about internet scams that the Solomon Star published, and had a good response from that. It took up a full page in the viewpoint section so it would have reached everyone here.

I know I keep saying the food here agrees with me too much, but I had a pleasant surprise this morning when I found the scales at work, I’ve actually dropped 5 kilos since I’ve been here, I need to drop at least another 5 if not 10, to feel comfortable, but now I know I am getting it off slowly I’m happy. I’m 82 kilos now, I should be about 75kg or a bit less I think. Less rice and more fruit would probably help. And getting out into the Nursery more often as well, so hopefully the setting up at Ranandi will help.

Thank God I loaded all the music up, I know, I keep mentioning it, but it really is a good sanity aid. Gary Moore and Jonny Lang have been having a good workout, and I’ve got a couple of mixes done that just play for a couple of hours. Aretha Franklin, Judy Collins, that goes into Flogging Molly, the Young Dubliners, Jefferson Airplane, Van Morrison, Grace Jones and then about an hour of techno/trance from the Gathering New Year Party Cd’s

Monday 19th October

Today felt like a Friday, both Tiffany and I are just exhausted with the moving, trying to juggle the workcrew so the contract work gets done, with the need to have all the plants moved out of the nursery and taken to Ranandi. We still have the shelter shed to be taken down, it was meant to have been lifted off last week, but as is the case here, the crane never arrived to lift the roof, then the day got put off, and now it looks like we’ll have to strip the iron off, and dismantle it all completely.

Then the container never arrived at Ranandi on Saturday, so our hope of getting the office stuff moved didn’t happen, the best day so far is tomorrow morning, at 9.30, a time and day I’ll believe only after it happens. Add in the truck back in the garage, again, or is it just once more, I’ve lost count of how many weeks it has been back and forth now, and still not fixed. I touched the brakes going in this morning, and the front left wheel locked up and pulled the truck sideways on the dirt at the bottom of my road where it meets Mendana Ave. Luckily it was facing the way I was going so it was a matter of driving off and not looking back. And being 6.30am there were very few cars on the main road.

By the time we had an email from Keithie getting all upset over the USP Course I sent Tiffany on, both of us had had enough. Tiffany sent an email back to Keithie telling her that if she didn’t like what we had to do while Keithie was away for 6 weeks in Europe then Tiffany was leaving, thank you for the position but it isn’t worth it, goodbye.

That pulled the pin on that powder keg, the next email was a bit more conciliatory. It all goes back to what I first noticed when I arrived here, and the remnants of the old Colonial days, when the natives were cute lovely little brown people, but you had to have a white person in charge. Tiffany is probably overqualified for the position she has with SEB, well, SEB is beneath her capabilities is a better way of putting it, but as far as Keithie is concerned she’s just another little brown person who will never amount to anything, and has to have someone in charge. I know I sound really jaundiced, it’s been that sort of period lately for us.

Anyway, I got my VSA report finished, or as much as I could without getting too involved, all the right boxes ticked, the right words written, the usual platitudes put in the right place. I know Steve won’t like it, but he has my seperate report to send as well, which really expresses how I feel. The official form has no place for the sort of stuff that happens here, or anywhere to even write it. Ok, it does say to put stuff on a seperate sheet if it isn’t covered, which I basically did with the 6 pages of personal observations.

And all through this, the work crew turn up every morning, smiling, happy, and work all day no matter what we have for them to do. And take pride in what they do. Steve told me while we down at Komunimboko that David is quietly happy I’m there. Steve does check on what I’m doing, I know I give him a fair bit of stick at times, but he does work extremely hard for VSA. Anyway, David said I’m the first advisor who has stood up to Keithie, and defended the workcrew over anything, let alone all the stuff that’s happened this year. It’s easy to support the work crew though, they work their butts off, in all weather, do a really good neat tidy job, and always look happy doing it.

So I goofed off for most of the day, Tiffany and I were coming up with ideas at times, and with our desks being crammed together now, it was easy for both of us to just toss ideas around whenever we felt like it.

Thanks Zoe for helping pass the long interminable stretch from midday till 4.30 on skype. And for the really off beat conversation we got into.

We will probably move into the BJS office this week for a while , not that it is something we want to do, right next door to Keithies office, but I can always vanish out to Ranandi and talk to the plants.

I know it is all making me depressed, my camera has barely been out for ages, which for me is a sure sign I’ve given up. So it’s back to the self motivation and force myself to start with the camera again. Same as I did in Ireland, I might have just wanted to stay in the flat, but I’d drive for miles each weekend, just to take photos of some obscure little place, or not so obscure like the pics I got for Marye of Ballyjamesduff. And all the dolemns, circles, tombs everywhere.

It’s 5.30am Tuesday, just looked back over this, sorry for the wallowing in despair anguish. I get frustrated with things here, and knowing that most of it won’t change, and having to try and work around all the inefficiencies, the tribal customs that really don’t work in a city but you have to adapt to them, and the overall failure of everything it becomes emotionally exhausting. Still, change what you can, accept what you can’t change, and work with what you’ve got.

At least I’m back to the early morning brisk walk into work for another week or so. Coolest part of the day so it is really pleasant walking through town.

Sunday 18th October

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Memorial Garden Henderson Field






Rove Prison front garden now


Another weekend gone by, I’m starting to resent weekends actually. Especially when I have no power or water, and the truck is having another of its fits and won’t start. Ok the truck I can cope with, it has been a constant run of crap repairs for the past 4 months so I can’t say it isn’t unexpected. Not having power really annoys me. I can’t run the laptop for more than a few hours on the battery, and I don’t think fast enough to get everything done in that time.

I’m still writing the VSA report, well, doing a lot of split screen copy/paste then write up thoughts and recommendations under the pasted stuff. I can see Steve and I having to write a whole new project plan and achievement indicators though. My original project is long gone, and it is now trying to establish a new nursery from scratch. Which is good, something I can do, but I hate the seemingly endless amount of paperwork that is also involved.

I was meant to be out at the site at Ranandi yesterday, the container we are going to use as an office was meant to be delivered, but the truck decided it didn’t feel like going anywhere, and I ran the battery flat trying to get it started. Even pushing it around the carpark here didn’t make any difference, it was having a real sulk. All I can hope is the container went onto the blocks we had set out for it.

Missed out on getting to the shops as well, I have enough stuff here to get by on for the week anyway, although I’ll need another 5kg bag of rice. The last one lasted 6 weeks, which is an improvement, I was going through 5kg in a month to start with. More varied diet now though, rice, spaghetti, kumara and cassava and more stir-fry than just rice with curry. Still not losing any weight though, which is more a reflection of how little I actually do all day while we are sorting out the mess we are in.

Keithie noticed the USP payment for last month in the accounts and wanted to know what it was for. It was for a 1 week course in Proposal Writing, which I sent Tiffany to. USP is the University of the South Pacific. Tiffany needed to go, Wills is not going to be available to us to write the Funding Proposals for the Aid Agencies for the rest of the year, and probably most of next year, and I don’t do PC Speak as it is required for the formats. Project descriptions, project costings yes, but the Funding Proposals have a specific writing style that as much as I would like to be able to write, tends to bring out the worst side of me.

Anyway, I have an argument with her booked for this week about it, as far as I’m concerned, it was something that Tiffany needed to do, she is going to be the one writing the Funding Applications up in the future. I’m not going to do it, on the basis that if I do it, it isn’t giving Tiffany any independence, and making her, and SEB dependent on advisors for everything. I’m here to advise, not take over, something Keithie and I have a bit of a difference over.

If you’ve read some of my earlier posts on funding and the formats you’ll know what I mean.

Anyway, so much for Saturday, I got water from the raintank, and got the floors mopped, there is an incredible amount of dust comes in despite the fine mesh over all the windows, and all the dead cockroaches cleaned out again. I sprayed Friday night, all the cupboard edges, any cracks in the walls, under the fridge, around the stove etc, and had what looked like a 99% kill rate. I’d like to think I had 100%, but the bloody things just keep coming back.

My geckos are still here, 3 large ones now, and several small ones hanging off the ceiling and walls, 2 small ones live permanently in my bedroom, I’ve not seen them venture past the doorway but the ones in the rest of the house travel through most of the rooms. Lord knows what they find to survive on, I’ve always got hundreds of really tiny ants everywhere, that sting like a sharp hot needle if they get on you, so i guess the geckos don’t bother with them, and I’ve not seen a spider in here in 9 months. Unlike Komunimboko where bloody Huntsman spiders were everywhere.

I gave the truck a try this morning, and of course it started without any fuss, so I went into work and tried to post some bits and pieces, but Telekom were not co-operating. I got a few emails away, or at least I hope they went, I’ll resend them tomorrow morning just to be sure. I haven’t figured out why Skype works really well, but nothing else does. Messenger and YIM are patchy, and opening pages with either FireFox or IE7 can be an exercise in futility at times.

We had the Solomon Island Half Marathon this morning, there were 1,000 visitors in Honiara for it, so I figured that was some of the cause for the crappy internet service today, everyone trying to email out of here after the race. Normally Sunday is the best day for internet, everyone is at church, in the mornings, and the Government offices aren’t open.

As an aside to everything else, I do tend to keep blathering away about the way Government and Council are run here. Apart from the blatant corruption, the bribery, and sheer in your face theft, the other part is the total refusal to deal with things that may be troublesome. Last week Keithie hand delivered to the Mayors office a letter outlining what SEB are doing, and explaining that due to the lack of co-operation, support and expense involved, SEB will not be maintaining all the city parks and gardens in future. It was returned unopened to her office quicker than Keithie herself managed to get back. So now, unless we do what I suggest and have it published in the Star and Island Sun, the mayor can claim he knows nothing about SEB, and what we are doing, and was not informed about the city parks and gardens.

I’ve seen better behaviour from 5 year olds. And this is a Council and Government that calls it self pro-active in attracting business and investment.

Some of the letters in the Star lately have been funny though. There was one last week from someone in Honiara writing about Pacific Casino, just down the hill from me. Wondering why they don’t clean up the roadside outside the Hotel, and pick the rubbish up, cut the weeds, look after the flower beds etc. We used to do it, but as the owner refuses to pay the cost, I stopped the work crew from maintaining the area, well, I stopped all the unpaid work, Pacific Casino was just one of many places. There have been other letters with much the same focus, about other areas of town that we used to maintain, and asking why Council don’t contract SEB to do it, as it is obvious Council do not have the staff, time nor inclination.





I’ve given up with the new phone, I bought a $50 recharge card, but can’t even get the phone to connect so I can put more credit onto it. And I haven’t got a pin number for the phone which is probably not a help either. And that’s another bugbear with Telekom. The recharge cards are only valid for 6 weeks once you activate them, and they only come in 2 prices, $50 and $200, with no credit for any unused amount after 6 weeks. So if you’re like me, and never use the bloody things, it is a waste of $50 every month just to have it in case there is an emergency and Steve needs to contact me.