Thursday 30th September

We’ve finally made a concerted start on the propagation house. Admittedly that corner of the field where everything is going looks a little like Woodhenge, but some order is discernible amongst the posts standing all over the place.






The top plate is on, Andrew has made the jig frame for the roof trusses, all the posts are in place and hopefully it is only a week or so away from finished. The container has arrived from Brisbane, so next week is going to be busy with shade cloth, sorting out the jumble of parts and piping for the irrigation, installing water tanks and wiring. Along with the potting bench, cutting bench and general sorting out of what the hell is this and where does it go.

We are going to make a start on putting the big posts in for the shade area, only 4 have been delivered so far, it isn’t a size the local timber yards carry as stock, so we have had to wait for suitable trees to be delivered before it can be cut. I may have to use the crane to get them in position, once they are upright, there is no way we can lift and move them if needed.

We had thunder for most of the afternoon, with a decidedly leaden sky, but it didn’t start raining till just after 4pm, then we had everything come down at once for a while. All over with by 5pm, but it did leave the air a lot cleaner and cooler for a while.

Wednesday 29th September

It must be my week for trying very hard to keep my mouth shut.

The 2 tonne truck arrived at work Monday with a broken passenger side mirror, just the glass luckily not the whole arm and everything, and the front suspension appears to have collapsed. The leaf springs are past horizontal and have a definite convex curve at the top over the axle.

Mirror was SBD$350 to replace, I’m still trying to get prices for 2 sets of leaf springs, plus shock absorbers and the fitting of. Best guess would be close to SBD$20,000 which we don’t have, so it looks like we’ll be down to one truck again, and the same person thinking he will be driving it as well. I still haven’t had an explanation for how either happened, I guess it just gets filed in the don’t ask, won’t tell box. I did try asking, but that started to lead to “words” so I didn’t push it.

I’m past getting annoyed about it now, the chainsaw got “borrowed” and came back in pieces with a seized piston and bent con rod, I told the guys this morning that if they didn’t have their new Hi-Vis jackets they couldn’t work on the road, so they would be going home without pay. So we were a few crew short today, while some went home to try and find the vests that they were meant to have left at work. Andrew is away this week, his Grandmother died the weekend, so there is no one responsible enough to check the tools and vests back in. And that includes the supervisor.

My post from Monday made it into WUWT as a header for most of today, only the bit about Honiara Airport, not the whole rambling rant thankfully. So that was my highpoint for the week so far. Now I’m expected to somehow get permission to stand by the Weather Station while a plane is arriving and departing with a thermometer to see just how much effect the exhaust has at that distance. Which is going to be interesting, getting a digital thermometer that is reasonably accurate here is going to be the hard part. So long as it registers changes the actual calibration isn’t a concern, it’s more to see if there is an effect.

I’m going to try working through the Environment Department, and the Weather office, I know a couple of people in both that may help get permission.

Andrew the builder starts tomorrow on the Propagation House roof. So you can expect another flurry of photos as it takes shape. I’ve still got 5 posts to go in, due to the normal Solomon time work ethic, they should be in tomorrow which makes them almost on time instead of Monday. We have a few of the big posts for the shade cloth, 10’ of 8” x 8” vasa timber. Definitely 4 person lift for each one, I can just get one off the ground at one end up to chest height, anymore than that and I’d be fooling myself. As for the sling it over my shoulder and walk away, I’m not even going to let that thought cross my mind. I’ve still got muscle damage from Ireland carrying railway sleepers on a landscape job when I popped a disc out of my spine. That hurt.

Kim is going back to Canberra the weekend to watch the re-match between St Kilda and Collingwood, after the draw last weekend. As they say, AFL isn’t a religion, it’s more serious than that. I tend to agree, if it was Geelong playing I’d be extremely tempted to go along as well. I miss the MCG as it used to be in the 60’s and early 70’s though, with the streamers all over the sidelines, the sheer bloodlust and noise from the crowd. It’s not for the fainthearted players when you get to a final at the MCG, if you can’t handle the stress, you don’t deserve to be there. 100,000 people screaming for 2 hours makes a great atmosphere. Or something.

Monday 27th September

By now everyone should have gathered that I’m not exactly enamoured of the religion known as AGW. I’ve been reading and following WUWT for a long time, I do read the garbage at Real Climate, more for the laughs, and just to see how snarky and childish Gavin Schmidt can get whenever he is proved wrong.

Anyway, Anthony Watts at WUWT is compiling a list of USHNC Weather stations in the USA, photographing, measuring, and checking them against the guidelines for accurate siting. If anyone thinks weather stations are sacrosanct, and are in carefully preserved and pristine areas, take a look at the sub-stations file in WUWT Projects. (Link to Surface stations at the bottom) From this project, it has been suggested we start compiling weather stations from around the world. So it was out to Henderson Field Airport I went this afternoon, camera ready and waiting. I knew where the weather station is, I’ve seen it often enough flying in and out.

Remember that this is the weather station that reports the temperature that is used for the Western Pacific region based on the Solomon Islands. And this is compiled into the reports that go to make up the “Global Average temperature” which was the foundation for John Keys idiotic acceptance and passing of the ETS scheme in New Zealand.

Therefore, you would think that surely this station would be in a position where it can accurately and consistently measure the temperatures, wind, rain etc. In all fairness it is in a good position, away from most of the buildings, but still has the tarmac, and a couple of buildings to the Northeast. It would rate about 4 on the USHCN Station Site Quality scale for adjustments, which means the measurements need to be adjusted DOWN by 2 – 3 *C.

Class 1: Flat and horizontal ground surrounded by a clear surface with a slope below 1/3 (less than 19º). Grass/low vegetation ground cover less than 10 centimeters high. Sensors located at least 100 meters from artificial heating or reflecting surfaces, such as buildings, concrete surfaces, and parking lots. Far from large bodies of water, except if it is representative of the area, and then located at least 100 meters away. No shading for a sun elevation greater than 3
degrees.
Class 2: Same as Class 1 with the following differences. Surrounding vegetation less than 25 centimeters. Artificial heating sources within 30 meters. No shading for a sun elevation greater than 5º.
Class 3: (error 1ºC) Same as Class 2, except no artificial heating sources within 10 meters.
Class 4: (error greater than 2ºC) Artificial heating sources less than 10 meters.
Class 5: (error greater than 5ºC) Temperature sensor located next to/above an artificial heating source, such as a building, roof top, parking lot, or concrete surface.

Add in the effect you will see in the photos below, and you will understand why I’m so bloody well sceptical about the whole con game Al Gore, CRU, GISS, HADCRUT, James Hansen, Phil Jones, James Connelly, Michael Mann, et al have perpetuated. And that is without going on to the IPCC and Patchuri.

It is hot here, 30*C is probably a good guess at the average year round daytime temp, we do get hotter, we can get really cooler like 26*C, but if you say 30*C no one is going to violently disagree.

If we look at the weather station, it is positioned at the corner of the landing strip, and the apron in front of the terminal. Planes exit the runway, roll down the short connecting road into the terminal area.

As you can see in this next set.


As the planes roll onto the apron, they turn slowly, and the exhaust points directly at the weather station. I’m only a dumbass maintenance fitter/ welder/ horticulturalist/ teacher, but I have suspicions about just how accurate the sensors in the Stevenson Screen are going to be after being subjected to several jet exhausts a day, both on arrival and again on departure.


Remember these are the instruments used to determine if the tropics are warming in line with AGW doomsday projections. And on which all the carbon taxes, ETS schemes, carbon trading, electricity pricing are based, and the justification for cluttering the landscape with grossly inefficient wind turbines. And don’t even try to tell me they are efficient. If they were they wouldn’t need subsidies, tax breaks, and a tax on other forms of energy production.

We’ve already had the same argument in New Zealand with NIWA and Salinger fabricating and altering data to suit his own agenda. Quotes from Quadrant On Line related to this,

Quote: The official archivist of New Zealand’s climate records, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), offers top billing to its 147-year-old national mean temperature series (the “NIWA Seven-station Series” or NSS). This series shows that New Zealand experienced a twentieth-century warming trend of 0.92°C.
The official temperature record is wrong. The instrumental raw data correctly show that New Zealand average temperatures have remained remarkably steady at 12.6°C +/- 0.5°C for a century and a half. NIWA’s doctoring of that data is indefensible.
The NSS is the outcome of a subjective data series produced by a single Government scientist, whose work has never been peer-reviewed or subjected to proper quality checking. It was smuggled into the official archive without any formal process. It is undocumented and sans metadata, and it could not be defended in any court of law. Yet the full line-up of NIWA climate scientists has gone to extraordinary lengths to support this falsified warming and to fiercely attack its critics.
Quote : Global warming during the 20th Century was 0.6C, with a margin of error of +/-0.2C. The Southern Hemisphere warming was less than half that level. But New Zealand warming, according to NIWA, was almost twice the global average - and with no error margins mentioned.
Referring to the NIWA web page, one finds that this major warming trend is the product of a single study involving only 7 temperature stations - out of the 238 stations which currently report to NIWA. In response to a request under the Official information Act, NIWA has disclosed that this study was undertaken as part of a student’s thesis some 30 years ago.
NIWA has no record of how the NSS came to be in their computers. The only reasonable inference is that the student himself, one Jim Salinger, must have added it when he became NIWA’s Principal Scientist many years later.
Quote: “About half the adjustments actually created a warming trend where none existed; the other half greatly exaggerated existing warming. All the adjustments increased or even created a warming trend, with only one (Dunedin) going the other way and slightly reducing the original trend.
The shocking truth is that the oldest readings have been cranked way down and later readings artificially lifted to give a false impression of warming..”
So the NIWA warming trend was revealed as entirely man-made, and all within NIWA’s own office. There was no external peer-review. To this day there hasn’t even been an internal review or any form of quantity control. There is no documentation.

And on this the whole stupid tax increasing cost increasing ETS scheme was foisted on New Zealand.

If anyone is taking notice, Sea Surface Temperatures (SSTs’) have been dropping in the past few years, and with the La Nina starting to take effect SSTs’ have dropped even faster in the last few months. If anyone can remember New Zealand in the 1950’s and early 60’s, when we had snow falls, ok, not much, but still snow, on the Bombay Hills south of Auckland, and frosts and fog throughout Auckland, guess what, we’ll be seeing them again soon.

And all those vineyards and dairy farms in Southland? If you have shares in them, I’d advise selling out now while it’s good, I have a feeling dairy and grapes don’t do so well when it is below freezing for months at a time and snow is everywhere.

Another 5 years without disruptions, and the Pacific Decahedral Oscillation (PDO) turns negative in 2015 to match the Atlantic Decahedral Oscillation which is negative now, and then we’ll see some great winters. It’s time to be building a couple of new power stations in New Zealand, we have all the coal, if we don’t keep selling it to the Chinese, to keep New Zealand energy rich for a few hundred years until we get a couple of thorium reactors sited. Hell, we could get the Chinese to build a few coal fired stations for us, they are commissioning a new one every few days at the moment, fired by Australian and New Zealand coal. Guess which country isn’t going to be short of energy, and cheap energy as well.

Add in the extremely low Cycle 24 that the Sun is in at present, and the Maunder Minimum looks likely, although my guess is just the normal 30 year cooling period. We’re about 10 years into it now, or close, so about 2050 will see another warming trend start hopefully. I doubt I’ll be here to see it, but I hope Damian, Hayden, Jesse Kahu all remember and don’t get sucked in by the next wave of hysteria when it happens

Ok not my usual post, but after getting the pics today, I felt like having a rant.

Thanks to
http://wattsupwiththat.com/ Anthony Watts.

www.SurfaceStations.org

http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/ Jeff Id at The AirVent

Willis Eschenbach for numerous articles, papers, and informed and witty discussions.

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

Numerous other websites, people, articles, that I should mention but I’ve lost the addresses, titles, headings etc for.

Saturday 25th September

I’m getting into another depressive state again. The frustration level is getting past my limit I think. We can get the parts for the mulcher, in maybe a month or possibly six weeks. They’ll be coming from Melbourne, via Port Moresby, then another ship to here. And please don’t ask about air freighting them. I know it’s only a 12 inch piece of metal and a drive wheel about 6 inches in diameter, but the airfreight worked out to be more than the parts cost to start with. I think we’re doomed to remain a developing country for the foreseeable future.

Al sent me a couple of cds, they arrived yesterday, thanks Al. One of Julie Fowlis, I vaguely remember her at RunRig in Scotland, before I ended up in Inverness Hospital, great cd, cuilidh, 3 disc special edition. And the Screaming Orphans, Circles cd. And Al got it signed by the Orphans as well!!!! Now I have to get to the USA to see them live and get another few cds.

Julie Fowlis cuilidh cd.

Screaming Orphans CD cover, Thanks for the note girls.

Al and the Orphans, Milwaukee Irishfest.



I don’t know how Solomon Post works, they are totally different to any other post office I have ever dealt with anywhere. I’ve had parcels sent to me in Australia, Ireland, and all picked up with no bother. Here, you get the third degree, “what’s in this?” “I don’t know” “Who Sent it?” “can I have a look at the return address?” And then they charge you for it as well. The parcel Mum and Rose sent up last year for my birthday got spread out, they wanted $40 duty for each packet of cigarettes, (2) then they charged me $38 anyway, when I said they could keep the cigarettes, I can buy them cheaper in Honiara. I have no idea what the charges are for, I used to think the postage covered everything, but not here. Anyway, $15 later I got the cds off them.

Needless to say, they have been playing most of last night and today.

We still haven’t heard back from Japan about the funding for the building, due to Planning changing it. And no one in Planning is prepared to put anything in writing about the decision either, so we are at a stalemate. I can’t see it going ahead before my contract expires, which isn’t helping my mood. I’m meant to be running classes this month till December, we haven’t water, toilets, books, classroom or something approximating a classroom. And the open sided event tent is not a classroom for 18 people. It won’t hold 12 people let along 18 plus tables etc. I can’t see the classes happening either at this rate. We can get a toilet put in for $26,000SBD< but that wasn’t acceptable and we were told to price a portaloo, like the construction site and event ones. Which from the local guy costs $800 per day, but we got a special price, cleaning only for $500 per day, $15,000 per month, which we would need till the building went up, so there is 4 months minimum if we started building now, or $60,000 gone anyway and nothing to show at the end. So we priced buying one from Australia. Remarkably cheap, it came to $7,000SBD, plus freight. But then, it has to be emptied everyday, so we are back to the $500 per day cleaning charge.

The $26,000 gets us a small building, on a platform, with an inground septic tank, and it’s ours. We’ll need one in the nursery anyway, I can’t see the nursery crew, the office staff, and the trainees all sharing the 2 toilets that are going into the office block.

But I can’t see agreement being reached on that in the near future either.

I may have the nursery structure in place before February, after that, I think I’ll leave it for someone else to organise, I’m just worn out dealing with the delays, frustrations and general lack of responsibility for anything here. Not having water to the house for the last week hasn’t helped either.
At this stage of the contract I’m meant to be at the completed and taking time out to oversee, instead I’m still dealing with the same problems that were here when I arrived. Nothing seems to get resolved, it’s all a lot of hand waving, toktok, and maybe next week ia? How I’m meant to train nursery staff when I don’t have a nursery is my main concern. There is no way I can have anyone trained in the 5 months remaining to run it. My 2 good ladies have left, the new ones aren’t even up to basic nursery worker stage yet.

I’d go outside and scream, but all it will do is frighten the fruit bats in the mango trees.

The good thing is that it has been raining nearly every day, not the tropical downpour stage yet, but still heavy for an hour or so each evening and morning.

Thursday 22nd September

I have got to cut down on the amount of rice I eat, which is going to be awkward as it is about all I can afford. Weighed myself today, I’m back to 83 kg, about 10kg more than I should be. L That’s the trouble with a high carbohydrate diet. I’ll have to start having more fruit meals, until I get tired of pawpaw, banana and pineapple salads. Add in some boiled/poached eggs for variety, I’ll try it for a few weeks anyway. If I can cut out 2 or 3 rice meals a week to start with it will help.

End of the week arriving, and still waiting for the parts for the mulcher to be ordered. I went in today to Farmset, they are still looking for the part number, my suggestion was forget the part number, you have the machine model number, it only has one main shaft, and bearings, and pulley, just order those. But no, we have to have the part number. Whatever happened to standardisation? You would think that a machine made in the thousands would have uniformity of parts. Well, I think it would, but not here. I’ve written to MTD.Ltd again to get the part number for Farmset to order the shaft, if I don’t do it, they certainly aren’t. The next step is to get an account with MTD and order it ourselves. And cut Farmset out of what could be a nice little earner for them being as we will probably be buying a larger mulcher next year.

Adrian arrived yesterday, Don Bosco Training School where he is currently hanging out, has a Caterpillar backhoe, with a scored and damaged hydraulic arm. They can’t get it repaired here, all of those facilities went in the civil war, so for me spending about 10 minutes online looking, he gave me a new shirt. Much appreciated as well. Found a replacement part for them from UKW in Shepparton Victoria, whether or not they can afford it is another matter, but they know where to get it from now.

We have the timber ordered for the roof of the propagation building finally, Tiffs brother is going to build it as soon as we get the materials, he figures about a week to complete. I hope it looks like I imagine it will, thatch roof open sides, it’s not really all that big, 7 metres by 10 metres, the roof pitch will be fairly high though to give the runoff for the rain. It’s still bigger than some of the houses people live in here though.

Still haven’t got water at Ranadi yet, nor toilets, power shifted, access gate, fence up, but I must be acclimatising, I’m not getting too stressed about it. It will happen, just not to my time frame.

I think the dry season has petered out, we’ve had rain most days this week, this morning was a good downpour about 5am, for an hour or so. Which keeps the day a bit cooler, but the humidity higher. So you don’t really notice the difference between it being only 30*C instead of 35*C because the humidity is about 80%. It’s been a thick cloying clammy hot day again. Another month or so till the rains really arrive, and then it will be floods, washouts, and landslips again.

Zoe was asking after my geckos today, and I forgot to tell her. I’ve got 3 of them back in the main room, 1 large one, about 4 inches, and 2 small ones about an inch long. There is one that lives in the bathroom, and another that lives in my bedroom. It’s taken them a while to come back, after me being away for a month during June.

My compost mix seems to be lacking nitrogen, or else it is still a bit fresh to use. Everything is growing in it, but not well, and looking decidedly pale. The crew got me another dozen bags of chicken manure today, I’ve got 2 bags tipped into a 44 gal drum filled with water, once that has had a chance to ferment, I’ll dilute it down and try liquid feeding the plants. When I say filled with water, the 2 bags of manure nearly filled the drum, there was about 6 inches of headroom left, but it did soak up a lot of water. It will be a strong brew though, high dilution needed.

I’m going to try some of the brewery waste mix next week, to see if there is any difference in growth rate and appearance.

Then I’ll try the brewery waste/chicken manure/sawdust mix, although that hasn’t had time to decompose yet. It will be another few weeks till we can use it.

St Kilda/Collingwood at the MCG Saturday, I hope St Kilda win, nothing like seeing the bloody Magpies get beaten. Plus it will make Kim happy at work, she supports St Kilda.

Tuesday 21st September

I ended up taking a mental health day yesterday as I noted. Not that it improved my mental health, but it got rid of the fever.

I should have taken today off as well, it didn’t help at all by going in to work. Although Tiffs brother arrived and can start on the thatch roof for the propagation house after Wednesday, so I need to get the last few posts in place, and one extra one he wants in the centre to run the angle supports from. I’m hoping it will look good, well, it should, but you know that difference that can creep in between what you see in your mind and the grim stark reality, a bit like the difference between the gorgeous lady you met last night at the bar you can’t remember the name of, let alone the city, and how did this harridan appear in your bed the next morning? Girls, you can change it around to suit yourself.

As a good friend once told me many years ago, always drink at a bar with ugly barmaids, when they start to look good it is time to go home.

But that is getting us away from the day. Adrian came in about midday, he’d driven past the lift truck, they were working outside #9 pruning, and lifting the rubbish cage up with the crane. Which sounds normal, apart from not having the hydraulic arms extended out, and the truck being on a 45* lean with one set of wheels off the ground and the tray twisted. So he’d gone back and after a few words got it sorted with the arms out, of course the timber I had in the truck to sit the hydraulic rams on had long vanished for firewood, so it took some time to find anything suitable. But they got it set up level finally and finished.

Then they got back to the site about 4ish, and said the crane wasn’t working. Adrian had already told me about the morning, so I went over the hydraulics etc, and found the safety mechanism had cut in and shut the hydraulics off. I didn’t show anyone where or how to reset, I can see what will happen next time if they know how to override it.

Did I mention the wheelbarrows yet? We bought 2 new wheelbarrows a while back, $1200 or so each, not too bad quality, but certainly not good contractors type. We have or had, several wheels left over from the older wheelbarrows that have either been damaged and destroyed, broken frames etc, which I had earmarked to make my nursery trolleys with, that have shrunk to only 4 left out of the 8 we had. Plus the old trays and some of the broken frames have also vanished. Ok, I know one of the crew has taken them home to rebuild a barrow for himself, which is fine, they were too light for us anyway which is why they got damaged so quickly.

Getting back to the new wheelbarrows. I noticed last week that they had only one stay on the front, instead of 2, which didn’t impress me at all, we put heavy loads into them, and now all it takes is a bump and an off centre load and the tray rips off the frame as the front isn’t supported any longer. I had a quiet word with the person concerned and they said they had been told it was ok to take one stay off each barrow to build their own one at home. I’m not impressed.

If anyone reads WUWT www.wattsupwiththat.com, the lead article at the moment is the eco-fascist greens in Western Australia basically bankrupting a farmer off his farm and land. Ok, it is a feedlot system, I’m not all that keen on them, but we have to raise food somehow, and the people involved in this one were doing everything by the book , and more, until the ecofascists started changing the rules and regulations retrospectively.

I can see the same thing happening in New Zealand with the stupid bloody ETS scheme, it won’t be financially viable to be a farmer raising livestock, with the emission charges, so there will be bankruptcies, more farms sold to the Chinese who are busily buying up farmland around the world to provide for themselves, and in a few years time everyone will be wondering WTF went on. All from some stupid failed US politician clamouring about non existent AGW, corrupt or idiot 3 rd rate weather men calling themselves Climate Scientists without being able to show any warming unless they adjust every temperature reading either down for the years before 1940 and up since then.

And stupid bloody John Key falling for it, and not having the guts to call the left wing looney lentil munching sock and sandal Malthusian Erlich inspired genocidal idiots in the green party and its ilk, to task over the lack of actual evidence, and NO, a computer generated game is not proof. You feed garbage data in, you get garbage data out, GIGO.

On another note entirely, I’ve been meaning to make ginger beer, the real stuff, not the tinned/bottled stuff, although Macs and Bundaberg are quite nice, I’m after the real exploding in the cupboard, fizzing over the room type of home made ginger beer, and I keep forgetting to get online and find a recipe. Finally did so today, and it is this one,

In a large preserving jar add:
1 dessert spoon of sugar
1 dessert spoon of ground ginger
A squeeze of lemon juice
2 cups of water.
This will be your plant…put on the lid and store it in a cool dark place.
The next day, add 1 dessert spoon of ginger.
On the following day, add 1 dessert spoon of sugar – continue to alternate these ingredients for the rest of the week, till you end up adding ginger on the 7th day.
Now, later on the same day, you’re ready to bottle.
In a large pot, or preserving pan, add 2 cups of sugar and 4 cups of hot water.
Stir till all the sugar is dissolved. Add the juice of 2 lemons. Gently strain in the liquid off your plant.
Then add 12 cups of cold water.
Mix well and filter through a fine tea strainer into bottles…makes about a dozen 340ml bottles.
Halve the sediment left in your plant jar, add 2 cups of cold water, 1 dessert spoon of sugar, 1 dessert spoon of ginger, a squeeze of lemon and continue as before for another week…and so on…
Keep your bottled ginger beer for a week or 2 before you drink it, so it has a little time to ferment.
You can either throw out the half of the plant, or start another jar going, or give it away to anyone who wants to try making it as well.
It is recommended to really chill the bottles well before opening.

Copied shamelessly from this blog http://www.keepinitkiwi.co.nz/blog/category/kiwi-chinwag/ which is the recipe I remember growing up with the starter in a jar being fed everyday for a week, then Mum bottling and me using the cap press, (we got high tech instead if using a hammer to put the tops on) then hearing a bottle or two explode in the cupboard in the laundry a week or so later.

Great stuff. I’ve got the starter going now, another week and I’ll be bottling some to try out.

Sunday 19th September

Well, I had my laugh for the week, I needed one anyway, Geelong got bounced by bloody Collingwood, so we didn’t make the Finals.

Adrian, the bane of my existence, hasn’t been around much the last few weeks, he was saying a while back he was feeling just a bit crook lately, so when he started getting bad stomach cramps, and crapping blood, he finally got himself off to the RAMSI Health Centre.

I know I shouldn’t have laughed, the poor guy was really worried, but as it turned out he was the cause of it all with his penchant for eating cold precooked sausages and bacon, without cooking them. He has a terrific dose of worms, probably a couple of months worth in his gut, and they didn’t have any worm tablets in stock here for him. I haven’t opened half my medical kit, well, apart from the suture needles and the painkillers, it is all still sitting in the fridge. He was telling me about it on Friday, I was trying really hard not to laugh too loudly, I’ve told him repeatedly not to eat any meat that he hasn’t cooked, but he likes cold sausages and raw bacon. I admit I do as well, but not in the bloody tropics, 30*C+ temps, high humidity, trichominosis (sp?) in all the pork here, what the hell does he expect.

Anyway, I gave him a couple of tablets to take, one is meant to be enough, knowing Adrian, he’ll need the other one as a back up to take after a week to make sure they are all cleared out.

The dry season seems to be coming to a close early, we’ve had thunder storms nearly every night this week, not a lot of rain with it, but some. Yesterday it fair bucketed down in the morning while I was in Honiara shopping, it was very nice. I got soaked, and just stood there for a few minutes letting the rain thoroughly soak me. The locals definitely think I’m the mad palangi. 15 minutes later it had stopped and 30 minutes after I was dry again.

I spent Sunday morning with the bucket and sponge and washed all the louvre windows again, the amount of dust that collects when it is dry is enough to cut the light levels considerably. No I didn’t take all the glass out, I just used a chair to stand on, and washed them in place, got the frames washed as well that way, and any water that got everywhere else dried up in minutes anyway. 34*C already at 11m, going to be about 35/36*C by midafternoon, then hopefully the storms will arrive. If not today, another day of this and they’ll be here Monday or Tuesday afternoon.

I’ll be having a busy time when I get my next break away, I’ve got 7 little melanomas that I can see so far, I’ll be having them burnt or cut out when I’m in New Zealand before they get to be a worry. I should most probably get them seen to here, but given what I’ve seen of #9, I’d really have to be at deaths door to consider it.

update, I'm a day late with this, came down with a fever Sunday afternoon, spent all of yesterday sweating it out and living on paracetemol and brufen. Back to normal tomorrow I hope