My apologies for the long post, we've had a few problems.
If there is an Oh God of Mondays, He must have been working overtime today. It seemed as if everything Tiff and I tried to get done today met up with an irresistible force, and it all vanished into some previously uncharted Schwarzchild Event Horizon, never to be seen again.
I keep getting optimistic, and then having it all knocked out of me fairly quickly, only three things today, the little truck, Adrian, and Telekom, with a sideshow event that affects everyone in Honiara from SI Electrical Authority. If I ever start getting all excited about having the truck back again, someone please remind me it isn’t going to happen. The time references went from “maybe 11 o’clock” to “maybe this afternoon, about 2 o’clock” then at 4 o’clock it had apparently decided to go on a Mission with Star Trek Voyager, and we are now expecting it “soon”. It is now a battery problem as well, the brake cylinder seals and pistons have been nearly replaced, I don’t know how they can be nearly replaced, but I’ll take their word for it. They’d put nearly 2 pints of brake fluid into the system, before someone thought to have a look around the truck, and wondered about the large pool forming under the rear wheel where someone had taken off the brake hose, and not reconnected it.
The battery is unable to hold a charge now, it’s barely 9 month old, and to my way of thinking having the mechanic use it while the truck is in the shop to jump start any other vehicles might have something to do with it, but I’m only some silly palangi. So, they deduced it must be the alternator not working, which meant the alternator is now out of the truck, again, despite being reconditioned last November, and when I left at 4, it was in several pieces in the cab. And it was going to be sent away to the auto electrician tomorrow. Again.
I read back through all of this today at work, in the past 9 months, since we have had to use the BJS mechanic, the truck has been in use for less than 12 weeks, and not consecutive weeks either. The longest run was 2 weeks back in October, since then it has been less than a week at a time before it has been back in for some repair or fix.
Adrian I’m not going to mention, just that I blew up at him again this morning, and as usual, he has no idea about what he’d done, absolutely no memory about last week, or what he said to someone. I know his condition is deteriorating, and I feel so sorry for him, but I wish he’d go and play somewhere else.
Telekom have got our phone lines at Ranadi screwed up somehow, after last weeks fiasco over the phone bill, when they charged us $3,000 for January, despite not having the line connected, and then found they’d made a “mistake” and it was actually meant to be a receipt for the connection payment. The adsl line, and I have no idea how they do this, and don’t want to know, is meant to be split off the telephone line by some imp in the exchange, who went on holiday, or died, or got sucked into a vortex, with the result that both the adsl and telephone lines are crossing each other, and over-riding the others signal. Well, the telephone works all the time, until we plug the adsl line in, but the adsl line doesn’t work at all.
The end of the container where all the wiring is, is still in the dark, we haven’t worked out any lighting yet so desperate were we to get out of the BJS office, and it lead to me muttering a few words that Tiff never knew I knew. Telekom said they would be out tomorrow to sort it out.
SIWA, my ever helpful Solomon Island Water Authority, haven’t paid their electrical bill for a while now, so SIEA, Solomon Island Electrical Authority, are cutting power to the SIWA water pumps every day from 8am till midday, or longer, until the arrears of $16 million is paid, and are threatening to cut off the power to SIWA totally. So it is hard to know when the power and water go off, is it over the unpaid bill, is it a fault, have the generators run out of diesel again, have the land owners at the water supply cut the line again?
I’d love to write a book about all this, but it is beyond believable unless you live here.
Taiwan has donated another $10million for the SI Cattle Restoration and Farming Fund. I think they have realised the previous $8million has gone, vanished, disappeared, and topped up the account again. From the report in this mornings Solomon Star, there are a few brand new 4WD vehicles, a lot of home improvements, but no fences, yards, fields. As I’ve said before, I can’t see this working at all, the wrong cattle breeds, no history of cattle farming, no long term view, there has been no talk of any meat processing plant, dairy industry set up, it’s just been to get the money, spread it around the wantok, and get re-elected. I’m still convinced water buffalo are the best animals for here, dairy isn’t a big seller here, apart from the ex-pats, but beef would be, and water buffalo have the best weight for size ratio among any tropical cattle, and we have the ideal conditions here for them.
9.37pm, the power has been off for 30 minutes, its just come back, and the water is also off.
The Prime Ministers Calvalcade of 4WD Police, Security, and assorted hangers on had a crash this morning at the Mendana Ave/Commonwealth Ave corner. There has been talk of a body across a car bonnet, etc, when we went past, the tv news crew were still filming, and the only vehicle left was a taxi with the front slightly damaged. Hopefully there will be more in the Star tomorrow.
Our gardens in the front of the Post Office finally got damaged over the weekend. Some young guy decided to see if the wood chip mulch would burn, on Saturday night. As he found out, it does burn, we lost 6 hibiscus, and 1 archontophoenix, he lost a couple of teeth, and probably has a few broken bones after the Post Office Security staff caught him and had a “discussion” with him over the error of doing something like that. I got the impression that the police didn’t bother pressing charges, but did join in the “discussion” before taking the guy to #9 to be patched up and sent home. At times you have to really like the way things are settled here.
Tuesday 16th March
At times living here is like watching a train wreck in slow motion, All the MP’s are being given $200,000 from the Rural Constituency Development Fund now, so they have some money to spread around the wantoks before the election, in the hope they will be re-elected. All MPs’ receive about $1 million a year for Rural Constituency Development (RCDF) and there doesn’t seem to be any questions asked about what or where the money goes. Some I know gets spent on paying for school fees for some of the people, funeral expenses, urgent medical stuff, but unfortunately in the majority of cases it just seems to vanish into the void, with no real evidence of any improvements to anyones lives or benefit.
There were a few MPs reported to be organising a strike, and were not going to attend the final session of Parliament before the House rises and dissolves before the election, if they didn’t get half the RCDF payment now. So they have been paid out, and can afford to pay for the votes.
There was nothing in the paper today about the Prime Ministers car crash yesterday, whether it is going to be a main headline tomorrow remains to be seen now. But in the same place this morning, at Point Cruz intersection, a convoy of Police vehicles had a serious mix up, with several police vans and cars involved. I never got to see it, but David and Tiff told me about it this morning when they picked me up. Traffic through Honiara was at a standstill for several hours, in both directions, backed up past Lawson Tama on this side, and almost back to Town Ground on the other at 9am.
Cyclone Ului is still causing weather here. Today was a mix of clear sunshine, followed by high winds and pelting rain. About 30 minutes apart all day. The low off Temotu is strengthening, so we may be in for a bit of heavy weather this week, luckily Cyclone Tomas is heading south from Fiji towards New Zealand. The seashore from Honiara east is being pounded, with waves coming across the road at Panatina every now and then. By the sound of the wind outside now, at 9.43pm, it is increasing again, so I’m guessing we won’t have too many people at work again tomorrow.
The Solomon Star had a double page middle spread this morning, about the perennial AGW. From the way it was written, AGW is now responsible for pollution, over fishing, flooding, forest clearing, lack of food crops, salt water intrusion, lack of fresh water and the price of rice. I’d love to write another article for the Star, but Steve feels it may not be a good idea with the present Govt trying to jump on the gravy train and get some of the $billions being thrown around by the UN Climate people. Anything that upsets that apple cart would probably be viewed with suspicion and I’d be on my way out of the Solomons fairly quickly.
As you may have guessed from the accumulation of dates, Telekom still haven’t sorted out our ADSL connection, it “maybe” tomorrow now. And the little truck has now progressed from “tomorrow” to “soon” When David called into the garage this morning, the truck had both front wheels off, again, the alternator was nowhere to be seen, and he said they were “playing” as he puts it, with the fuel pump again. It has now been a week to put new brake shoes on. If the truck ever went reliably after they “play” with it everytime, I wouldn’t mind, but I know that it will only be a week or two before it goes back to go through this all over again. There seems to be no diagnostic skill base, any problem always results in a complete motor strip down, and a rebuild, followed by weeks of repeat work to fix it.
I notice it especially with the work crew and the Stihl grass cutters. Any machine that starts to play up, gets an immediate full motor disassembly, everyone gathers around muttering and looking with puzzled expressions at the parts, poking at various bits, then it is all put back together, the spare bits go into the box with all the other left over bits from the previous motor, and I get to spend a day or so taking it all apart away from David and the crew, and usually finding that all it needed was the throttle cable adjusted. Wisely or not, I bought a copy of Small Motor Maintenance back with me, covering all the Stihl and Briggs and Stratton motors we have. I noticed David, Andrew and Emory all reading through it with intense attention, I’m not sure if they follow the language in it though. Somehow, “throttle cable” doesn’t translate into the pijin equivalent of “wire hem pullem pushem makem ingin hem go faster” and “petrol hem gogo tru lilabet slow makem ingin hem not start” for “fuel blockage”
Oh well, it helps pass the day anyway.
Wednesday 17th March
Happy St Pats day.
The storm surge yesterday caused a bit of havoc at Rove, with the houses on the sea front being washed away, which isn’t surprising, they were built almost at the edge of the rocks, even a normal wave was washing up to them, so the 5 – 6 foot ones yesterday really reached into them. About a dozen houses, all native thatch ones, were either severely damaged or completely destroyed. Everyone knows we get tsunamis, but still insist on building right to the waters edge. Ok, there is a land issue here in Honiara as well, with no land available for more people to build on, so any patch of unused land soon sprouts a thatch roof and walls, and all the wantok move in.
The police car incident yesterday was caused by a CID Officer
1/ either having a malfunction in his car, which caused it to cross the barrier and collide with two other Police vehicles going the other direction.
2/ Falling asleep at the wheel, etc as above.
3/ Being drunk behind the wheel with the above result.
Either way, it is going to be interesting reading about it as it unfolds.
Tiff and I are living in the container, which isn’t the best really, until we get lights installed, and get the airconditioner working better. We gave up about midday and sat outside for a while in the shade to cool down. We’ll have to find a fan to move the air around better, or a larger aircon unit. The container walls heat up really quickly, and the little unit we have struggles.
I’ve got the little truck back, for tonight anyway. David went into town this morning, called into the garage. They were now playing with the master cylinder for the brake system, and looking for new seals for it. David said he drove Stalen around Honiara for 3 hours while he went looking everywhere for a seal kit. In the end, David took the old seal, found some thin rubber, cut a new one, put it together and drove off. As he said, it’s been in the garage for nine months now, we’ve had it for about 10 weeks during that time, for maybe a week at a time, and now it’s due for certification again. We’re taking the truck to our usual mechanic in White River tomorrow, to get it all done properly. After 9 months it has turned into a farce with the repairs. Every repair turns into something else needing fixing, all that is left now is the motor, and I’m not keen to let them touch that. Oh, the battery is completely stuffed as well, only 8 months old, as I mentioned earlier, having the garage guys use it to jump start all the other vehicles would never have anything to do with it not being able to hold a charge now. Hopefully we can get a replacement under warranty, it is meant to be a 24 month guarantee on it, but knowing how things are here, we’ll end up paying for something.
Telekom have accepted that we have 4 months credit for internet, we’ve been paying for it since November when we had the phone lines connected, but as we never used it till this week, to find it wasn’t connected anyway. They had connected the phone line, but not installed the adsl connection, so we have been paying $500 a month for something they never installed to start with. I considered getting a home connection, till I saw the charges, base home deal is 128/64U/D, with a 1Gb cap per month, and $0.37c per Mb charge over the 1Gb for $826.56 per month, on 12 month contract. Plus installation fee of $1,023.93, wired adsl modem for $836.80. Being as I’d be over the 1gb limit in one night uploading photos, and the next cheapest deal is $1500 for 3gb, I won’t bother wasting my money.
And knowing what the true U/D kbps speeds are here usually, I’d be just adding to my normal frustrations with it. I’ve never yet hit an upload speed over 0.3, despite Telekom claiming 128. And downloading goes almost into 3 decimal places before you get a number not a zero.
As a comparison, you can get a Webspeed Netcafe deal, 2048/896 U/D with 135Gb per month for $30,405.00, plus standard installation and modem costs.
I can’t see the Solomons becoming a thriving internet centre for a while yet. Our work crew get $1,000 a month pay, so any internet connection is never going to figure highly on their list of priorities, no matter how hard the schools keep trying to push the “every home needs a computer with net access for the students to learn” mantra. Plus most of the people here don’t have electricity.
And speaking of electricity, SIEA are now threatening to extend the power cuts to SIWA, so Honiara will be without water for longer each day from the end of this week. I have to keep reminding myself I live in the Capitol City of the Solomon Islands. Ankh-Morpork is run better.
Everything has stalled for the moment with the lease, until Hasting –Deering sort out the mess with Dept of Lands. Jason said it was nearly sorted, so perhaps by the end of the month we’ll know. I admit I’ve got to force myself to stay interested at the moment, we’ve got all the funding approved, and in various accounts. And until we get the lease and tenure agreement, we can’t do a thing.
Carmen from the Orchid Society called out to Ranadi today, they want to move all the orchids back with us, Forestry have no one at the Botanic Gardens to look after the collection, and the grounds are falling into mess. I’m trying to juggle our area that looked so big a month ago and is now looking decidely too small for everything. With the Quarantine area, a retail shop, storage for the equipment, the classroom, office, propagating shed, layout beds, now an Orchid display house. I’ll fit it in somewhere. But the girls I have working in the Nursery will be working for sure. I’m holding off with the letter to SI Quarantine till I have all the paperwork written up, or the procedure outlines anyway. I’m copying the requirements for a Level 1 Bio Security Facility from the New Zealand Bio-Security Quarantine Document, which is what the SI requirements are based on. A long paper trail, everything documented, signed in and out, which is good, but a pita to set up initially.
9.35pm, and still no water, it looks like another night without water. It comes on at 7 am, till 8 am, you have to be quick. Sometimes in the evening, but not reliably.
I’ve got another necklace to pick up this week, the one I’m having made to order. It’s expensive, but it looks well worth it. If you like that sort of thing I suppose.
The weather continues windy, stormy, wet, Cyclone Ului is still almost stationary south of us, which gives us strong winds and rain from the north, the depression off Temotu is waiting for its turn, although that may fizzle out and just be a normal summer storm for a few days. The sea is running fairly good waves, there have been 2 ships, well, one ship and a barge, washed onto the shore this week, all the island ferries have been tied hard to the wharves, Bonegi beach may be good the weekend, if I have the truck going that’s where I’ll be if there is some sunshine as well.
Sunday 21st March
Thank God its’ Monday tomorrow. Although if past Mondays are anything to go by, I may regret saying that. It’s been a really hot sunny weekend, I twisted my knee walking down the path to the shop on Saturday morning so I’ve been hobbling around the house since then, the saga, or is it the dirge, of the little truck continues.
Doug the Mechanic at White River is fairly confident he can fix the brakes, he actually had them almost finished Friday night, but the problem is that the glow plugs for the motor have all burnt out, or malfunctioned, or whatever it is glow plugs do when they don’t do it. We’re trying to find another set, prices have ranged from $180 each to $270 each, if we can find a better price than $180 I’ll be happy.
I could have used the truck this weekend, just to get to the market even. I started walking down there this morning, but gave up at the bottom of the hill, I may have made it there, but getting back with 2 shopping bags of fruit would have been beyond me today. I really did a good job on my knee, slipped on the path then managed to land sideways with my leg doubled underneath me. I felt my knee give a “pop” sound. Nothing broken, just a lot of wrenched ligaments and stuff, the stretch bandage has kept the swelling down anyway. And I’m almost walking on it ok.
Friday we signed the Japanese Grass Roots Funding Agreement, $570,000 worth of development funds for a building, the German Embassy and the EU money is sitting in the bank, all we need is the land tenure to be sorted. I’ve got a few orders placed for planter bags, weedmat, and general nursery stuff now, I may have to go to Brisbane for a week soon to finalise irrigation pipework and sprinkler heads, which will be a good trip. It will be soon, BJS have a container coming up from Brisbane at the end of April, I’ve been allocated space in it, so I may as well fill it.
My Mum is still hanging in there, she’s not able to eat much, and as she said tonight when she rang, she’s getting so tired of mashed food, and soup, and she’d really love a hamburger. She’s sleeping a lot more now, but still gets out and about, thanks to Rose taking her out. She has home help from the Hospice, the district Nurse calls in frequently, and all the ladies from Mums dog-minding hobby call in to see her with their dogs as well, so she isn’t on her own much. It’s just a matter of waiting it out really, I think Mum is just trying to prove the Doctors and Specialists wrong in how long she has.
In the time honoured tradition of displacement activity, I’ve been playing with a trial version of Dreamweaver most of the weekend, instead of finishing off drawings and proposals. Well, if I’d had the truck I would have been at the beach, so it sort of works out the same. I would have preferred the beach, but never mind. I’m finally understanding Dreamweaver, I know if I play a bit longer with it I’ll be able to make it do what I want, well, within reason, getting used to coding and scripting is taking this old brain a bit longer. We have to update the SEB website, from Honiara Beautification Committee to Solo Enviro Beautification, so I’m making up a new set of pages in Dreamweaver, well, I will be making up a new set of pages once I get used to using it. All the photos I have are going to come in handy, along with all the notes I’ve got buried in amongst all of this twaddle.
Wills has all the passwords etc for the old site, I’ll get them off him this week, and start over the next few weeks redoing all the pages. Knowing my luck, I’ll lose the entire site, before I get it figured out.
We’ve got a quiet week ahead I hope, I have everything finished for SI Quarantine, if they are happy I’ll start with the procedure manual, which they have to approve, then hopefully we can make a start on putting all of this together at Ranadi.
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Julie, the Malaitan lady who is making my big necklace, gave me the necklace in the picture on Friday, as a “sorry” for missing me the other Saturday due to the cyclone. We’ve been playing tag on the phone for a week trying to meet up so I could see the design she is working, frigate bird pattern with bands of orange and brown shell. We ended up with quite a crowd standing around us, the photos I had a while back of the market stall with the beads and baskets are her work. She sells from the alcove next to Wings supermarket, so there is a constant stream of people going past. Anyway, we were going over the pattern, I was sketching designs, she was pulling bead work out of her bag, and we had about 20 people all gathered around looking. Someone asked her to make them one with the same pattern as mine, and she told them no, this was my design, and it was for me only. I have no doubt that once I leave it will be all over the place, but for now, it’s “my” design. What she has done so far looks really good, definite frigate bird design, the sharp pointed wings and tail, very distinctive. I’m hoping it will help me catch more fish, the locals use the frigate birds as fish finders, if you see them circling overhead, there are always fish underneath.
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