I’ve not been able to phone out since Friday, Telekom have been upgrading the mobile equipment, or something, and mobile phones are a hit or miss thing at the moment. Rose emailed this morning, Mum is into the last stages and is barely able to swallow liquids now. I’m hoping she can last another week, all the flights out of Honiara till after Easter are fully booked and the waiting list is longer than the available planes anyway. Tiff is back next Tuesday, once shes back I’ll get a flight back to NZ, hopefully in time to say goodbye.
It’s been a couple of sweltering days this week. Since the cyclone passed over a week ago, we have had no rain, clear blue skies and high temperatures. The cyclone off Darwin is drawing northerly winds across the Solomons, but without any rain with them. It’s been interesting watching the clouds build up each afternoon, since reading Willis Eschenbachs article in www.Wattsupwiththat.com The Thermostat Hypothesis. Well written, and once you see it happening, it makes for an interesting day of cloud watching.
There was an article in the Solomon Star on Monday, “Our Disappearing Beaches” in the Private View point page. http://wwwsolomonstarnews.com/viewpoint/privateview/4328
which annoyed me immensely. Well not annoyed, maybe had me muttering away for a day or so. I’ve got a reply going into the Star tomorrow, hopefully published Thursday. As you may have guessed, it’s about AGW killing the coral reefs, loss of all the fish, salt water seeping into the fresh water, hot sunshine etc. Nothing about all the extra people now living there, over fishing, selling all the beche de mer to Korea, dumping raw sewage onto the reef, drawing more water from the source than can be replaced.
At times I miss GreenPeace, the original version that is, not the AGW Doom laden hypocrites they have become now.
Anyway, I finally got a few pages written up to send in to the Star. After a few rewrites to tone the language down.
I’ve got used to living here I think. A few years ago I’d have been getting all upset over things like the little truck never being finished, it is annoying, but there’s nothing I can do to hurry the process along, so put it away and wait. The best I have now on it is that it “should” be finished by Thursday. I’ve never heard “should” used here before, so it will be interesting to find out where it fits with “now” soon” “maybe” “today” “tomorrow”. I’m picking it is just an amplifying verb attached to “soon” or “maybe”. As, “it should be finished soon” or “We should be finished maybe tomorrow”.
I don’t know what is going on with Coca-Cola Amitol here. Their bottling plant in Papua New Guinea seems to be on a determined course to reduce the amount of CO2, and I got caught again with 2 bottles of Sprite Lemonade that are decidedly flat, limp, vapid, and only just barely above tapwater in taste. Hidden in the small print on the label are the dreaded words “ Minuman Berperisa” so they have a bare minimum of Bi-Carbonate in them, bare being an untraceable amount, as it doesn’t figure at all on the calorie label. If I hadn’t been so thirsty I’d have walked back down the hill to the shop and changed them, but they were cold, it was hot, and it was liquid. I’ll check more carefully next time. The Coca-Cola from last year is still being sold, I don’t know why anyone would drink it, it would have to be the most disgusting taste for any Coca-Cola product, and that includes “New Coke”, another great marketing disaster. Just leave things alone you idiots!
Brief update tonight, I’ve spent most of the evening trying to write the Solomon Star article, will update again Thursday before the Easter break.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Weekend 27th –28th March
We cleaned up the rubbish tip that City Centre becomes on Friday. It had got to the stage where the City Centre Management finally realised Council weren’t going to do anything, and we now have another contract agreed to maintain the area. We had the entire crew in there Friday, 4 truck loads of rubbish so far, and about 3 loads of tree prunings to be collected Monday.
It had a bit of street theatre involved. When we arrived it had all the usual people sitting around there, betel nut sellers, people just passing the time of day, and David started putting up the road cones and telling everyone to move away because we were going to be cutting tree branches etc. One lady took great umbrage at this and started arguing back, so David started one of his never ending monologues about all uifala kam here dis place makem throwem rabish every place likem pigpig. Iufala live in village like pigpig ia? Stop kam dis place live like pigpig, go live in bush likem pigpig, nomoa kam here mifala village and makem rabish everywhere distaem ia?
And so on for about 30 minutes. He had quite a crowd gathered by the time he’d finished. I’m not sure how much impact he had, we’ll find out Monday no doubt when we go back to prune the trees, and see how much more rubbish has been dropped there this weekend.
It probably cost us more than the $1500 per month City Centre are paying for it, but hopefully once we get it all cleaned up, and have someone in there a few times a week it may start to come more presentable. This is right beside Mendana Ave, beside City Centre, which has shops, the NZ High Commission, a few other Government Depts and is right at the centre of the Honiara Business area in Point Cruz. I’m sure there are recent pics in Google Earth, once we get the internet working properly at Ranadi I’ll upload a lot more into G-Earth.
We’ve had Premier Ma from Taiwan here, as I mentioned earlier. The editorial in the Solomon Star on Monday has drawn a lot of flak from various MP’s, all desperately giving examples of what they have spent the RCDF or Cattle Fund on. It all sounds good, until you look at the figures involved. I’m not convinced that paying the salaries of 5 Health Centre staff would use up $200,000 per year, given that the salaries are only in the $15,000 per year bracket, it seems to my figures there is a lot of money left over. As for the Cattle Fund, from letters and reports in the Solomon Star, there are a lot of new 4wd, motorbikes, solar panels, being noticed around the provinces, but no fences, yards, fields, paddocks. Oh, and no cattle either. Never mind, it was only $18 million. Only pocket change here for the politicians. Barely $360,000 for each MP.
From John Roughans column in the Star, the average change of MPs every election is 44%, so nearly half of the sitting MPs are not returned. As he writes, it is as though they just want to get into Parliament for a term to get the money, and the RCDF (Rural Constituency Development Fund) is like a never ending flow of money. It is meant to be used for Constituency development, and I have to admit, there have been a few MPs who do use it to improve their constituencies, but the majority use it to buy votes at the next election, and to keep their wantok happy.
When you consider that nearly of each Parliament is not returned, and you have 25 new MPs each election, it is a wonder that anything gets done, or perhaps it is more understandable why the Solomons is in such a shambles. I’m not meant to have political comments in here, it’s hard to live here and see the totally dysfunctional Government and Council Departments and not have some “views” about it all. I get, as is evident from some of my previous posts, frustrated trying to deal with people who have personal agendas that take precedence over actually getting something done. If they can score a point, they will obstruct, deny, or just flatly ignore a proposal that would benefit everyone.
I was overly optimistic about getting the little truck finished for the weekend. It turned into a brilliant clear sky, hot sweltering couple of days, and with Telekom upgrading the mobile service, from almost non-existent, to intermittent service, I haven’t been able to contact David to find out what is happening with it. Adrian had mentioned on Thursday about going to Bonegi for a days diving, but with no way of contacting him, it became a matter of waiting to see if he turned up, which he didn’t. It gave me another excuse to wash the house out again, I had to be at home Saturday morning to see if the Ant Spray people were coming, again, which never happened either.
It’s now been a month since I had water through the lines, apart from a couple of occasions where it came on for a couple of hours. I took the meter reading yesterday, since 26/02 to 28/03, it hasn’t changed. I have to keep reminding myself I live in the capitol city of the Solomons, and not in a rural village, after the trip Steve and I did to Komonimboko last year, I’d prefer living there to the endless frustration living in Honiara causes. Well almost, if there was internet available. PFNet are gradually getting out to all the provinces, with their email connection, I’m not sure how it works, they advertise it as an email connection only, so it may be something to do with bandwidth and it isn’t enough for someone like me that browses everywhere. I’d be happy with that though.
Tiffany borrowed my Zen and the Art of Making a Living book last week. After 8 years of working with SEB she’s decided this year is going to be make or break, and she just needs that little nudge to get her out of the comfort zone and into doing something else again. I feel pretty much the same, despite everything coming together finally, I know it’s going to be a constant argument over everything we want to do. And at the end, the ideal of being an independent organisation will not happen without a lot of arguments and “words”.
Tiff has 21 weeks holiday pay owing, she’s not had a holiday since she started with SEB, and since Cyclone Ului passed over Bellona she’s anxious to get home and see her family. The argument is now over the $50 difference between her flying there and coming back on the ferry, instead of taking the ferry each way. As she’s only going for a week, and the ferry runs once a month at present, I’m having trouble understanding why there is an argument. I got her to email back and mention the outstanding holiday entitlement, if it comes to push and shove, I’ll get her to take all 21 weeks owing. And not come back.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Wednesday 24th March
Warning, this was written after a long frustrating day, and coming home to find the water is still shut off didn't help my mood.
Another hot dry sweltering day. HKL Logistics, the people that service the RAMSI encampment, are sponsoring the Childrens playground at Rove, and are sending a crew of welders, carpenters in to fix everything there. It’s actually a shambles of a place, the kids love playing there in the daytime, but at night the Boat turns into a Working Girls place of business, or a public toilet, a drinking spot, or a doss house for anyone who needs somewhere to sleep.
I’ve mentioned before about hating to get the ladies in the work crew in there to clean it out, in all honesty working at a sewage works would be preferable. Thankfully we don’t have a drug needle problem here yet, it’s mainly kwaso, or marihuana, or for the more conservative ones beer. HKL are going to seal the openings off, so no one can climb inside, or drop rubbish through.
The Taiwanese Premier is in town, one of the ROC Midshipman training ships is anchored in the harbour, and all the pomp and garbage is going on in town tonight. I didn’t get an invite.
Tiffany asked me what he was here for, from the Solomon Star article, he is going to give the Govt another $10million towards the cattle fund, or the RCDF fund. Tiffany asked where all the cattle were from the first $8million that went missing, and I pointed out the truck to the hills behind Honiara and said they were all behind those hills, or maybe behind the distant hills, or perhaps on the islands out there. Where ever they are it won’t be accessible. It is turning into a farce here with all the different funding that is being poured in, and so far only the Japanese, AusAid, and NZ Aid are taking steps to control where and what the money goes for. Everything else just goes to the politicians, who disburse it to their wantok, or keep it for election bribes. The Japanese, Australian and New Zealand agencies keep the money, and pay it out on invoice, they don’t let the politicians touch it, and the invoices have to tally with the original proposal and request. If only a few more would do the same we might stand a chance that some of the aid would actually get to where it is needed.
I mentioned I think about Peter from VSA Wellington calling in the other day, he is the Regional Director for South Asia and Pacific for VSA, really nice person, been a volunteer in several countries, programme officer, now director, and still keen to get in the field as much as possible. I’d be doing the same in that position, if the choice was paperwork in an office, or going for field trips to remote locations, I’ll be at the airport waiting.
Anyway, we were having one of our usual rambling talks, and he almost accused me of being right wing, and having definite non-socialist views, which I’ve never thought of, but in some ways he may have been right. Although what I’m doing working for nothing in a place like Honiara, or the Solomons doesn’t actually tie in with being a right wing hard line up against the wall type conservative. I know I was sick of reading about Nanny Helen Clark by the time she finally got voted out, Labour are responsible for the largest dumbing down of the education system I’ve ever seen in New Zealand. As for putting quotas in place for University/employment, how bloody stupid can you get. Then making the entrance exams easier because the “target” groups are under represented. Sorry, you make the entrance exams harder, to make sure only the best get through, and if that group isn’t representative of the population mix, tough, you don’t dumb the system down. Go back to the start of it and find out why the bottom 30% are failures, don’t make it easier for them to just drift through. And if it means all the left wing touchy feely psychobabble looney everyone is a winner even little Johnny who is a certifiable psychopath gets a medal for tying his shoelaces vegetarian don’t play on those swings in case you fall and break an arm sorry graduates from teachers college get put up against the wall, or get fired for being nanny looney left wing nutcases, well good.
But I’m not really all that right wing reactionary. Just getting tired of being the ambulance at the bottom of the hill, while successive Governments keep taking the safety barriers down at the top.
I had people on TOPS courses in NZ, teenagers, young men, women, 20 somethings, that couldn’t read or write, but had all sorts of glowing certificates from school. Best Finger Painter in Year 8, Student with the Best Attendance Record 48%, Most Happy Person in Class, all extremely relevant to learning and finding employment I am sure.
One of the few times I’ve ever felt like giving out those sort of Certificates was at a school camp I was on with my daughter at Kawau Island, and we had David, who was mentally handicapped, but wanted to do everything the others were doing despite a fear of heights, water, and a long list of other phobias. Somehow I got him across a 3 rope bridge, swimming, and generally joining in. If any kid deserved a medal for making progress, from all the ones that were there, he did. And walking backwards on a 3 rope bridge while talking and guiding a visibly frightened 11 year old isn’t as easy as it looks.
Still, that was play, I get annoyed at the continual dumbness being foisted on kids in school. The “no one is smarter, better, faster, stronger” than anyone else attitude. No wonder kids just drift through with no sense of having to strive or work for anything. Mind though, that was all I did at school, turned off, drifted through with just enough work done to satisfy the teachers, and spent most of my time reading books that were meant to be above my level. I think getting expelled was the high point of my scholastic achievements. The school had had enough of me, and I was certainly over going there. Hi Damian!
I admit I read a lot of Fred Reeds columns, http://www.fredoneverything.net/
and he certainly isn’t one of your politically correct writers. Which I think is needed more often, all the pc crap in the world isn’t going to fix a problem that is there, all it does is paper over the cracks, while everyone calls it non-cognitive learning disorder, or socially maladjusted behavioural syndrome, or gives certificates for collecting the most rubbish.
Hmmm, I might have a coffee and calm down about now. I know, I’ll mention the water situation. It is now 7.45pm Wednesday night, and once again, still, there is no water. And hasn’t been at all today. I’m going to get hold of Steve tomorrow and get permission to write to the Solomon Star just to vent a bit of steam off. I’ll have to send it though him first I think, I may get carried away. I’m getting very used to Japanese style washes, having 2 x 10 litre buckets helps, one for getting all soaped up from, the other for washing it all off with clean water. It still isn’t as good as standing under a shower though.
The Football (Rugby) Stadium is nearing completion, the fence came down today, and all the outside is now plastered, so you can’t see the mis-match of different concrete and blockwork. I keep wondering how much of a water supply/sewage system/electricity supply the money poured into the stadium would have bought. But silly me, those things don’t have the photo opportunities that a big bright new Rugby Stadium in a country where less than 1% of the people play rugby can give. Not to mention the 68 new shops, the Restaurant, the business offices.
I’m really on a roll tonight with this, at least the things Tiffany and I are working towards are an improvement, and we are trying to get things done to make the place look and feel better.
Another hot dry sweltering day. HKL Logistics, the people that service the RAMSI encampment, are sponsoring the Childrens playground at Rove, and are sending a crew of welders, carpenters in to fix everything there. It’s actually a shambles of a place, the kids love playing there in the daytime, but at night the Boat turns into a Working Girls place of business, or a public toilet, a drinking spot, or a doss house for anyone who needs somewhere to sleep.
I’ve mentioned before about hating to get the ladies in the work crew in there to clean it out, in all honesty working at a sewage works would be preferable. Thankfully we don’t have a drug needle problem here yet, it’s mainly kwaso, or marihuana, or for the more conservative ones beer. HKL are going to seal the openings off, so no one can climb inside, or drop rubbish through.
The Taiwanese Premier is in town, one of the ROC Midshipman training ships is anchored in the harbour, and all the pomp and garbage is going on in town tonight. I didn’t get an invite.
Tiffany asked me what he was here for, from the Solomon Star article, he is going to give the Govt another $10million towards the cattle fund, or the RCDF fund. Tiffany asked where all the cattle were from the first $8million that went missing, and I pointed out the truck to the hills behind Honiara and said they were all behind those hills, or maybe behind the distant hills, or perhaps on the islands out there. Where ever they are it won’t be accessible. It is turning into a farce here with all the different funding that is being poured in, and so far only the Japanese, AusAid, and NZ Aid are taking steps to control where and what the money goes for. Everything else just goes to the politicians, who disburse it to their wantok, or keep it for election bribes. The Japanese, Australian and New Zealand agencies keep the money, and pay it out on invoice, they don’t let the politicians touch it, and the invoices have to tally with the original proposal and request. If only a few more would do the same we might stand a chance that some of the aid would actually get to where it is needed.
I mentioned I think about Peter from VSA Wellington calling in the other day, he is the Regional Director for South Asia and Pacific for VSA, really nice person, been a volunteer in several countries, programme officer, now director, and still keen to get in the field as much as possible. I’d be doing the same in that position, if the choice was paperwork in an office, or going for field trips to remote locations, I’ll be at the airport waiting.
Anyway, we were having one of our usual rambling talks, and he almost accused me of being right wing, and having definite non-socialist views, which I’ve never thought of, but in some ways he may have been right. Although what I’m doing working for nothing in a place like Honiara, or the Solomons doesn’t actually tie in with being a right wing hard line up against the wall type conservative. I know I was sick of reading about Nanny Helen Clark by the time she finally got voted out, Labour are responsible for the largest dumbing down of the education system I’ve ever seen in New Zealand. As for putting quotas in place for University/employment, how bloody stupid can you get. Then making the entrance exams easier because the “target” groups are under represented. Sorry, you make the entrance exams harder, to make sure only the best get through, and if that group isn’t representative of the population mix, tough, you don’t dumb the system down. Go back to the start of it and find out why the bottom 30% are failures, don’t make it easier for them to just drift through. And if it means all the left wing touchy feely psychobabble looney everyone is a winner even little Johnny who is a certifiable psychopath gets a medal for tying his shoelaces vegetarian don’t play on those swings in case you fall and break an arm sorry graduates from teachers college get put up against the wall, or get fired for being nanny looney left wing nutcases, well good.
But I’m not really all that right wing reactionary. Just getting tired of being the ambulance at the bottom of the hill, while successive Governments keep taking the safety barriers down at the top.
I had people on TOPS courses in NZ, teenagers, young men, women, 20 somethings, that couldn’t read or write, but had all sorts of glowing certificates from school. Best Finger Painter in Year 8, Student with the Best Attendance Record 48%, Most Happy Person in Class, all extremely relevant to learning and finding employment I am sure.
One of the few times I’ve ever felt like giving out those sort of Certificates was at a school camp I was on with my daughter at Kawau Island, and we had David, who was mentally handicapped, but wanted to do everything the others were doing despite a fear of heights, water, and a long list of other phobias. Somehow I got him across a 3 rope bridge, swimming, and generally joining in. If any kid deserved a medal for making progress, from all the ones that were there, he did. And walking backwards on a 3 rope bridge while talking and guiding a visibly frightened 11 year old isn’t as easy as it looks.
Still, that was play, I get annoyed at the continual dumbness being foisted on kids in school. The “no one is smarter, better, faster, stronger” than anyone else attitude. No wonder kids just drift through with no sense of having to strive or work for anything. Mind though, that was all I did at school, turned off, drifted through with just enough work done to satisfy the teachers, and spent most of my time reading books that were meant to be above my level. I think getting expelled was the high point of my scholastic achievements. The school had had enough of me, and I was certainly over going there. Hi Damian!
I admit I read a lot of Fred Reeds columns, http://www.fredoneverything.net/
and he certainly isn’t one of your politically correct writers. Which I think is needed more often, all the pc crap in the world isn’t going to fix a problem that is there, all it does is paper over the cracks, while everyone calls it non-cognitive learning disorder, or socially maladjusted behavioural syndrome, or gives certificates for collecting the most rubbish.
Hmmm, I might have a coffee and calm down about now. I know, I’ll mention the water situation. It is now 7.45pm Wednesday night, and once again, still, there is no water. And hasn’t been at all today. I’m going to get hold of Steve tomorrow and get permission to write to the Solomon Star just to vent a bit of steam off. I’ll have to send it though him first I think, I may get carried away. I’m getting very used to Japanese style washes, having 2 x 10 litre buckets helps, one for getting all soaped up from, the other for washing it all off with clean water. It still isn’t as good as standing under a shower though.
The Football (Rugby) Stadium is nearing completion, the fence came down today, and all the outside is now plastered, so you can’t see the mis-match of different concrete and blockwork. I keep wondering how much of a water supply/sewage system/electricity supply the money poured into the stadium would have bought. But silly me, those things don’t have the photo opportunities that a big bright new Rugby Stadium in a country where less than 1% of the people play rugby can give. Not to mention the 68 new shops, the Restaurant, the business offices.
I’m really on a roll tonight with this, at least the things Tiffany and I are working towards are an improvement, and we are trying to get things done to make the place look and feel better.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Tuesday 23rd March
Tiffany, Chie, Bruce, Keithie, Wills, Daisy
The sorry tale of SIWA has become a never ending story. SIEA announced they intend to increase the power cuts until SIWA pay the $16 million arrears, which I’m sure will upset more people as the water supply dwindles. It barely affects me, I’ve not had water to the house since Saturday morning, and that was only for a few hours up to 8.45am. There was a good editorial in the Solomon Star earlier this week, telling both sides to get their act together, we’re meant to be a city, and not only a city, the capitol city, and to also consider the consequences not having a water supply makes on tourism, investors etc. SIWA and SIEA are both Govt SOE, surely a bit of creative book-keeping could solve the problem, it isn’t as if the Solomon dollar is a benchmark currency.
We’ve had a few bits of good fortune with the contracts this week, MID have decided that all the roadside gardens, parks and roundabouts are to come under their jurisdiction, and asked Tiffany to redo our pricing to include all of these. At the same time, we can still keep our contracts with the sponsored gardens, so for once SEB is well into the black in the ledger.
SIWA = Solomon Island Water Authority
SIEA = Solomon Island Electricity Authority
SEB = Solo Enviro Beautification
MID = Ministry of Infrastructure and Development.
I’ll try to remember to put the words in when I use abbreviations
We had a farewell lunch for Chie from the Japanese Consul at Kitano Mendana. She is leaving at the end of the month, to join her husband in Munich. Chie has been our contact at the Consuls Office for the Grassroots Funding, and has been a tremendous help with getting everything finalised and approved. Wills leaves on Wednesday to join his lady in London, I’m sorry to see him go, he’s got a lot of ideas that we have borrowed, stolen, acquired, and he wrote the application for the EU Grant, which was approved just after Christmas. At least both have been able to see the outcome of the work they have done for us, I’ll be sending updates to them as we get further into the construction stage.
The weather has settled, clear blue skies again for the last few days, and hot dry conditions. The little truck should be on the road once again once we get a new battery for it, and knowing my luck, the weekend will bring another cyclone.
We’ve got an allowance in the EU Grant for a truck, with a Hi-ab lift, and I’m looking through the website for the Japanese exporters. There are a few there that would be suitable, up to 3 tonne lift, on a 3 or 4 tonne truck. It’s just a matter of deciding which one, and then going through the ordering and importing paperwork. If I can get a reasonable deal, we should have enough spare to also get a small 4x4 for an office runabout, rather than using the little truck.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Monday 15th March - Sunday 21st March
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.
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.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Sunday 14th March
A wet and almost miserable day. The rain started about 4am, and has been almost incessant all day. A few brief spells of nearly clear patches, but never for very long. I meant to go to Kukum Fish Market this morning, but decided it can wait. As is becoming normal, I haven’t got transport, the little truck finally had new brake shoes fitted all around on Wednesday, I was feeling a bit happier about that till Wednesday night when I drove it home. New brake shoes don’t help if there is no brake fluid in the line. And naturally, it isn’t a simple thing to fix now, the front brake cylinder seals are damaged, they were hoping to have it finished Saturday morning, after walking into town yesterday, I walked back home.
It’s now been 9 months since we first took the truck in to have the suspension joints tightened, I’ve had it for maybe 3 months of that time, and rarely on a weekend. We keep being told to use the BJS mechanic, my feeling is he hasn’t much work, and needs our truck to practise on. Although he does do all the Rav 4 vehicles Tony imports, and sells. Hmmmm, remind me not to buy a Rav4 here
Yesterday was beach weather, clear brilliant blue skies, no wind, and hot. I’d the intention of going to Bonegi, and putting up with the Australians, but the whole day became a waste of time. The ant guys were meant to be here at 10am, to spray for white ants, so I had everything out of the cupboards, clothes, suitcases, stacked on the bed, a pile of kitchen drawers and food in the middle of the floor. I gave up waiting for them at 11am, went into town to see if the truck was ready, they hadn’t been by the time I gat back home an hour later, so it may be sometime next week they come. In the mean time, everything is put away again, which also gave me the opportunity to wash out the cupboards, and give the house a good wash inside.
I’ve given up trying to keep the window panes clean, there are close to 400 louvre window panes. And the amount of dust that is here is impossible to keep ahead of. I did spend a weekend a while back, and took out all the main room louvres, and washed and cleaned them, put them back, within a week you couldn’t tell the difference, so it isn’t going to be high on my list of things to do on a weekend.
Thursday night Tiff, David and I went to Wills place for a farewell drink, he’s going to London in a fortnight. He’s been busy with his cocoa growers co-operative, and Kastom Gardens, and hasn’t caught up with everything we’ve been doing. He was really pleased with everything Tiff has done in the past few months, getting all the proposals written, and also accepted and funding approved, without needing Wills to help. I’m going around to catch up with him next weekend, he has a few more ideas and contacts we need to develop further with SEB.
We heard back from Tropigro Burnells in Brisbane. They have had a name change/email etc, it took a few attempts to contact them but they replied on Thursday with prices for planter bags and weedmat. Unfortunately they have gone out of stocking everything else we need, so I may have to deal with Carann NZ for propagation tubes and trays, although there must be someone in Brisbane stocking them, More people to contact Monday. I might see if the timber yard can cut boxing for us and we can make our own trays, but we do need the propagation tubes.
I have to write to the Director SI Quarantine, well, I’ve got the letter done, and another plan, and then we go from there with the Level 1 Quarantine Facility. I’ve used the NZ Bio-Security guidelines, it’s a bit of a squeeze even with the land area we have to fit it in due to the narrowness of the block, hopefully having the timber yard and the heavy machinery graveyard on the back and side fences will help, plus the huge amount of vacant land in Hasting Deering to start with.
If necessary we can use wind break material to screen the area, attached to the fences.
Bruce asked us on Thursday if there was any use for spent hops and mash from the brewery. He was hoping to turn it into chicken or pig feed, at present SolBrew pipe it out into the harbour, I’m not even going to go there on that issue. Anyway, we’ve got him convinced it is useless for stock feed, but we need it for compost, along with the wheat husks that Delrite the flour mill are also dumping into the harbour. I’m not going to start again with the reef being killed, the fish stocks being wiped out, by all of this. It’s AGW, everyone says so. Idiots.
If all of this comes together we’re going to be needing more land, very quickly. Wills suggested we start splitting all of these separate enterprises off SEB, and setting them up as private companies. I’ve always felt SEB should be able to stand alone, without funding required once we get it established properly, Wills idea is to keep SEB as a Contracting Organisation, and everything else be separate and run outside of the SEB confines. Which makes sense, and gives those enterprises more chance as well. Something for Tiff and I to talk over this year.
If anyone has any old novels they really don’t want, send them here please. I get annoyed at paying $40, $80, for second hand novels. The only shop in town with books now is Nautilus Souvenir shop, I get a bit annoyed at paying $40 for a well read copy of Adventures of Modesty Blaise, they have the full set of the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant? at $100 per volume. All well read and slightly battered. I’ve read them all before, but I go spare with nothing to read. I know Hartman Kester Davies almost by heart now, Plant diseases by Kerruish is falling apart, I did bring back my copies of Zen Flesh Zen Bones, and Idries Shah book of Sufi parables and stories, The Way of the Sufi, plus Zen and the Art of Making a Living. I’m working through A Dickasons Geometry of Sheetmetal work, again making various patterns for practise. I think Honiara Library is the only one I’ve ever known to be a library without any books. Everything got trashed during the troubles/ethnic tension/civil war etc.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
9th March
9th March
Monday started off almost dry, then from midday on it decided to let all the water down at once. As is usual, I was out in it shopping, then Tiff and I had another meeting at the Japanese Consul to collect all the paperwork for the Grass Roots Funding, we were both soaked through just walking up Commonwealth Ave. I may invest in an umbrella one day.
We’ve got $570,000 Solomon funding to build the office/classroom, which may be just enough, if not, we can play with some of the other funding we have for development and construction. It’s only taken a year to get to this stage, no wonder I get so depressed at times here. I’ll need another year just to make sure everything is settled and working, and everything will continue. It’ll be a good assignment for a Nurseryman to follow up on after I leave. I’d like to stay with it longer, but I know once it is all set up, and running, I’ll be bored with it, and want to move on anyway. So a year putting all the systems in place, fixing all the little problems will be enough. After all the frustrations of the past year, I’m having trouble accepting it is actually happening now.
Tuesday
Another of those days when you have to laugh, or at least have a bit of fun. I mentioned we are putting the wall into the container, well, when I say we, I mean that I left David and Emory with a rough sketch, all the timber, I helped initially getting the timber cut to size, but the rest has been up to them. David came into the office yesterday asking me to go out to Ranandi and help them put the wall covering on, 10mm plywood, a few cutouts etc to go around the door, air con and window, but nothing major. I told him no, he didn’t need me there, he could just go ahead and do it. He did look a bit disgruntled, as if I was at fault for not going out to hold his hand.
Anyway, When we went out there this morning and I had a look, he’d done a good job of it all, even got the louvre windows in, the door frame fixed tight, and the ply cut and fitted. As I said to him, he’s been so long having white people tell him what to do, he’s stopped thinking for himself, and has got to the stage where he can’t do anything. He looked at me, then the look on his face as he realised what I’d said was brilliant. I left him to do the internal covering, and sort out the lights, it may not be as perfect as you’d get outside here, but I know he’ll do as good a job as he can now.
The other bit was when Tiff and I were working out a work plan for the nursery construction, and she kept asking me how long something would take, so she could enter it into the flow chart. I think it was the irrigation system, to start with, I asked how many people I’d have helping, and said 2 weeks, then she asked me how long if I was on my own doing it, and I said about 3 days. I had to explain the difference between me doing it without having to show/explain, and teach, and having 3 or 4 people who have never done irrigation systems before, and the need to make sure they know first, so that if it needs repair, as it will, they can do it without having to find some palangi to come and be the supervisor. I know that sounds a bit condescending, until you work here and see the really basic skills knowledge that exists, the need to show, explain, and show and explain again becomes natural with anything.
I’m always thankful I ran the TOPS courses in New Zealand before coming here, they gave me the patience to look beyond what I think people can do, and look at what they actually do, and the skill levels and back ground knowledge first. Then we start doing the basic stuff first, and build up the knowledge base. Same as with the TOPS Programmes, giving 18 yr olds a hammer and a box of nails and letting them hammer nails into scrap wood half the day till they could hit a nail competently, and swing the hammer, not push it onto the nail head. Using a handsaw, reading a tape measure, all stuff people outside here take for granted, or learnt so long ago they have forgotten they never knew how.
Tying knots in rope is another lesson in “more is better”. I’ve mentioned several times about having to tow start the little truck, I got so frustrated with having to cut the rope each time, due to the Solomon Island Knot they use, that I banned them from tying knots, until they could do a simple bowline, and a half hitch. I still have a way to go with that one, but a few of them have learnt so far. David keeps having little digs at me occasionally about “making” them use the whitemans way instead of the Island way, I never buy into the argument, just mention that it isn’t anyones way, it’s just another method that is a bit simpler, and works easier, and most of the stuff we are doing has been imported from overseas, so maybe the methods used where the idea comes from should work here as well. Apart from theories about time, date and gravity.
I wondered what had happened to my house water yesterday when I got home, thought for a while it was SIWA as usual, then Joel came over and said he’d had the plumber back and changed the lines back to how they were originally. So my house line had been put at the bottom of the hill again, from the gravity tank, then fed back up the hill to my house, which is above the head level. He couldn’t work out why I had no water again. It wasn’t a major thing to change, just a matter of disconnecting a couple of connections, swapping the feed lines over, but the lack of understanding is hard to fathom at times.
The little gecko is back, same one that lost its tail, with a new tail growing. It looks as though hind legs don’t regrow, it still has a deformed rear leg, which is how I recognised it, and the tail is a slightly different colour to the body still. If I can get it back onto my laptop I’ll get another pic of it.
Something else I need to do, is get out and take more pictures, as I’ve mentioned previously, I know when I’m getting depressed with things as soon as I stop taking pictures. That grey fog of despair that clouds your mind and stops you seeing what is there.
The weather is clearing slowly. It should be good for the weekend, well, the mornings and early afternoon anyway. We’re still in the wet season, so the afternoon early evening rain still arrives at 4.30 every day. Along with the sudden downpours at odd times.
If anyone followed the links I posted the other day to Willis Eschenbachs discussion papers, the “Thermostat Hypothesis” paper is the best description I’ve read of weather here.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/14/the-thermostat-hypothesis/
the link once more.
The photos I posted a while back of the ladies with the street stall and the shell necklaces/carving/baskets, I’ve decided to get my big necklace made finally. Imelda left SEB while I was away, for a better job, well, one that had more hours a week than we could offer at the time, so I’ve lost contact for a bit. The ladies were there yesterday which led to a long discussion about what I wanted, the pattern I want in the centre edging, a frigate bird, not the usual religious crosses and bible quotes, which will make it a bit larger than usual, and of course the price went up to compensate for the extra time and design. Still, it’s going to be worth it, and with the others will make a really good addition.
We have a meeting with MID again tomorrow, with all the drawings and designs, for Commonwealth Ave, a meeting out at Dalgro to organise the pavers, and to make sure they can add the colouring agent for the pavers. I think Tiff has a few other things organised as well, we have Government House design and schedule to present on the 31st, I have to go back to SI Quarantine as well this week for discussions about the Quarantine Facility being incorporated into the Nursery, if I get the chance I’ll call into Telekom and find out why I can’t call the USA from here.
Hopefully everything will be moving forward now, all the funding is approved, apart from the lease at Ranandi, but we’ve got to start ordering now to have everything arriving when we’ll need it. Most of the stuff is coming from Brisbane, and the next container is the end of April, then July after that. Allowing for a couple of weeks with shipping and customs, we need to have everything ordered and in the container soon, otherwise it will be September before we have anything to start with.
Monday started off almost dry, then from midday on it decided to let all the water down at once. As is usual, I was out in it shopping, then Tiff and I had another meeting at the Japanese Consul to collect all the paperwork for the Grass Roots Funding, we were both soaked through just walking up Commonwealth Ave. I may invest in an umbrella one day.
We’ve got $570,000 Solomon funding to build the office/classroom, which may be just enough, if not, we can play with some of the other funding we have for development and construction. It’s only taken a year to get to this stage, no wonder I get so depressed at times here. I’ll need another year just to make sure everything is settled and working, and everything will continue. It’ll be a good assignment for a Nurseryman to follow up on after I leave. I’d like to stay with it longer, but I know once it is all set up, and running, I’ll be bored with it, and want to move on anyway. So a year putting all the systems in place, fixing all the little problems will be enough. After all the frustrations of the past year, I’m having trouble accepting it is actually happening now.
Tuesday
Another of those days when you have to laugh, or at least have a bit of fun. I mentioned we are putting the wall into the container, well, when I say we, I mean that I left David and Emory with a rough sketch, all the timber, I helped initially getting the timber cut to size, but the rest has been up to them. David came into the office yesterday asking me to go out to Ranandi and help them put the wall covering on, 10mm plywood, a few cutouts etc to go around the door, air con and window, but nothing major. I told him no, he didn’t need me there, he could just go ahead and do it. He did look a bit disgruntled, as if I was at fault for not going out to hold his hand.
Anyway, When we went out there this morning and I had a look, he’d done a good job of it all, even got the louvre windows in, the door frame fixed tight, and the ply cut and fitted. As I said to him, he’s been so long having white people tell him what to do, he’s stopped thinking for himself, and has got to the stage where he can’t do anything. He looked at me, then the look on his face as he realised what I’d said was brilliant. I left him to do the internal covering, and sort out the lights, it may not be as perfect as you’d get outside here, but I know he’ll do as good a job as he can now.
The other bit was when Tiff and I were working out a work plan for the nursery construction, and she kept asking me how long something would take, so she could enter it into the flow chart. I think it was the irrigation system, to start with, I asked how many people I’d have helping, and said 2 weeks, then she asked me how long if I was on my own doing it, and I said about 3 days. I had to explain the difference between me doing it without having to show/explain, and teach, and having 3 or 4 people who have never done irrigation systems before, and the need to make sure they know first, so that if it needs repair, as it will, they can do it without having to find some palangi to come and be the supervisor. I know that sounds a bit condescending, until you work here and see the really basic skills knowledge that exists, the need to show, explain, and show and explain again becomes natural with anything.
I’m always thankful I ran the TOPS courses in New Zealand before coming here, they gave me the patience to look beyond what I think people can do, and look at what they actually do, and the skill levels and back ground knowledge first. Then we start doing the basic stuff first, and build up the knowledge base. Same as with the TOPS Programmes, giving 18 yr olds a hammer and a box of nails and letting them hammer nails into scrap wood half the day till they could hit a nail competently, and swing the hammer, not push it onto the nail head. Using a handsaw, reading a tape measure, all stuff people outside here take for granted, or learnt so long ago they have forgotten they never knew how.
Tying knots in rope is another lesson in “more is better”. I’ve mentioned several times about having to tow start the little truck, I got so frustrated with having to cut the rope each time, due to the Solomon Island Knot they use, that I banned them from tying knots, until they could do a simple bowline, and a half hitch. I still have a way to go with that one, but a few of them have learnt so far. David keeps having little digs at me occasionally about “making” them use the whitemans way instead of the Island way, I never buy into the argument, just mention that it isn’t anyones way, it’s just another method that is a bit simpler, and works easier, and most of the stuff we are doing has been imported from overseas, so maybe the methods used where the idea comes from should work here as well. Apart from theories about time, date and gravity.
I wondered what had happened to my house water yesterday when I got home, thought for a while it was SIWA as usual, then Joel came over and said he’d had the plumber back and changed the lines back to how they were originally. So my house line had been put at the bottom of the hill again, from the gravity tank, then fed back up the hill to my house, which is above the head level. He couldn’t work out why I had no water again. It wasn’t a major thing to change, just a matter of disconnecting a couple of connections, swapping the feed lines over, but the lack of understanding is hard to fathom at times.
The little gecko is back, same one that lost its tail, with a new tail growing. It looks as though hind legs don’t regrow, it still has a deformed rear leg, which is how I recognised it, and the tail is a slightly different colour to the body still. If I can get it back onto my laptop I’ll get another pic of it.
Something else I need to do, is get out and take more pictures, as I’ve mentioned previously, I know when I’m getting depressed with things as soon as I stop taking pictures. That grey fog of despair that clouds your mind and stops you seeing what is there.
The weather is clearing slowly. It should be good for the weekend, well, the mornings and early afternoon anyway. We’re still in the wet season, so the afternoon early evening rain still arrives at 4.30 every day. Along with the sudden downpours at odd times.
If anyone followed the links I posted the other day to Willis Eschenbachs discussion papers, the “Thermostat Hypothesis” paper is the best description I’ve read of weather here.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/14/the-thermostat-hypothesis/
the link once more.
The photos I posted a while back of the ladies with the street stall and the shell necklaces/carving/baskets, I’ve decided to get my big necklace made finally. Imelda left SEB while I was away, for a better job, well, one that had more hours a week than we could offer at the time, so I’ve lost contact for a bit. The ladies were there yesterday which led to a long discussion about what I wanted, the pattern I want in the centre edging, a frigate bird, not the usual religious crosses and bible quotes, which will make it a bit larger than usual, and of course the price went up to compensate for the extra time and design. Still, it’s going to be worth it, and with the others will make a really good addition.
We have a meeting with MID again tomorrow, with all the drawings and designs, for Commonwealth Ave, a meeting out at Dalgro to organise the pavers, and to make sure they can add the colouring agent for the pavers. I think Tiff has a few other things organised as well, we have Government House design and schedule to present on the 31st, I have to go back to SI Quarantine as well this week for discussions about the Quarantine Facility being incorporated into the Nursery, if I get the chance I’ll call into Telekom and find out why I can’t call the USA from here.
Hopefully everything will be moving forward now, all the funding is approved, apart from the lease at Ranandi, but we’ve got to start ordering now to have everything arriving when we’ll need it. Most of the stuff is coming from Brisbane, and the next container is the end of April, then July after that. Allowing for a couple of weeks with shipping and customs, we need to have everything ordered and in the container soon, otherwise it will be September before we have anything to start with.
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