Wednesday, August 22, 2007

New project

A couple of days ago I was starting to feel lost in retirement and then all of a suddy, there is a posting on the Mac Users' Group for free computers. I decided to take them...about 12 plus a couple of laser printers. I will pick them up this evening and start cleaning them up and configuring them for Bali. It is long enough now to get over the bad time that Indonesian Customs gave us both entering and exiting Bali.

The difficulty with such an undertaking is getting the stuff to Bali for free. Garuda Airways will help with one or two computers at a time, but then we have the same problems with Customs when going through Denpasar airport. In reality the only way to do it is to talk the John Fawcett Foundation into giving me some space in one of their sea containers which regularly go to Bali. The Foundation has also had lots of problems with Customs and now ships directly to Surabaya where the Customs Department is more 'transparent'. It seems that they have a sort of computer system there whilst in Bali they do everything on paper. Once unloaded in Surabaya the container is trucked to Denpasar, Bali.

The John Fawcett Foundation has the use of a shipping container owned and paid for by Ross's Salvage, a company which buys Balinese manufactured furniture and ships it back to Western Australia. Good for the Foundation as they get to fill it with medical supplies on the upward journey.

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