Day three Bali

Day three in Bali and we have done lots.  Yesterday we went to Kuta to take a look at the big department stores of which the Mata Hari is the largest.  As I recall, the Mata Hari was one large tall building with many departments on different floors. In the last few years it has been rebuilt and all those departments are scattered around the large shopping centre in different locations.  Not sure it is better.    Today we went to Ubud and en-route we took in a Barong & Kris dance.  The whole show took about an hour and the traditional story was updated with a bit of humour inserted for the tourists.  I was impressed with the dance and costumes but would have rather had the Readers Digest Condensed version over half an hour.  The Gamelan orchestra was brilliant and here is a small clip I shot of them playing. Forgive me for including a shot of my feet at the end.

Ouch sorry for the poor quality.  I forgot to take my camera with us and had to borrow cousin Val's little camera to take the Ubud pics and Video.  Sorry for the put-down Val.




In Ubud we dined at the Lotus restaurant.  The food was excellent and the dining area overlooked a large pond and temple.  Everywhere we have eaten the costs have been huge...roughly around 90,000 Rupia for two.   That is about $9. Australian!

This is the hot season here and there are not many Australian tourists about.  We have observed large groups of Dutch, some Germans and Russians; French and Spanish, plus a few languages/nationalities which escape identification.
Tomorrow we are off to Legian where cousin Val hopes to buy some fabrics.  I have ordered a pair of trousers from a small tailor shop near our hotel.  I will also try on some inexpensive trousers at the local supermarket, Hardy’s and get them shortened by the tailor who is making my trousers.

Our hotel is comfortable, but on closer looks it is shoddily built.  We bought the cheap holiday, so we cannot complain. Next time I will pay the extra and go upmarket.

Some pics of the tradesman standards...

We had a very nice snack meal at a tavern near Hardy's Dept store.  It is owned by a Dutch national and has some smart notices on the walls.

Steamy Bali

Well, here we are in Bali.   The hotel certainly isn’t like the web photos, but it is basically OK,   The humidity is very high and we will forgo any walks and instead take taxis everywhere we go.   Within the Sanur area (read oldies side) a taxi to just about anywhere is no more than $2.
We, and me in particular, had a passport/document overload.  In Perth Airport we filled in departure documents with needed birthdates, passport numbers, expiry and all the other stuff which has to be filled in before progressing to the Customs area.  I must look like a terrorist as I was selected for special treatment walking through a metal detector and then a full body X-ray.  I was shown the result of the X-ray  and I explained that the shoulder positives were from titanium screws from a shoulder injury I had. I couldn’t explain the positive in my groin area  and remembered that years ago a friend had called me ‘needle d***. Maybe he was right??    My bags, along with everyone else’s were X-rayed and I was pulled aside and my carry-on bag was again X-rayed.  I lost a small pair of nail scissors, a roll-on deodorant and a small can of foam shaving cream.  The customs bloke apologised when I asked him what I would now remove my nose hair with.
On the plane en route to Denpasar another two documents had to be filled out asking some different questions.  In Denpasar airport we purchased our visa @ US$25  and went through the baggage check again.    I am going to buy a girlie purse to hold my passport and documents to save opening my carry-on case 15 times during the return trip.
Once at the hotel we unpacked in our respective rooms and I found the aircon was not working.  Luckily, because it is the off season, there were plenty of vacant rooms and they let me go try the aircon in several rooms until was satisfied that I was not going to be broiled overnight.  All is well and cousin Val and I are happy with our accommodation.

We had a lovely lunch in a bar and this evening dinner at a familiar restaurant.

I forgot to pack a camera cord and will have to buy one before I can post any photos here.

Life for 'murder'

The law is (or was) an Ass.    A murder case some thirty years ago is being revisited in the hope of quashing a young man’s conviction and jailing for life.  During a house robbery an elderly man suffered bruises and fractured ribs and died from a bleeding stomach ulcer a week later.  The prosecution successfully argued that the stress of the incident caused his ulcer to bleed and the Jury found the young burglar guilty of murder.  Even if the prosecution argument were true, surely he should have been convicted of the lesser charge of manslaughter.  The burglar served seven years with hard labour before being released on parole.

At the trial the State Pathologist gave evidence saying that stress had caused the ulcer to bleed and the Jury took his evidence on board.

His appeal against the conviction has been under way since 2005 and now has the backing of Nobel Prizewinners Marshall and McClusker who maintain that stress is not a factor in bleeding ulcers.  Prof. Marshall and Malcom McCusker won the Nobel with their studies on the causes of stomach ulcers proving that bacteria and not stress causes stomach ulcers.

Surely the conviction must be overturned. 

Five days to Bali

Yesterday morning I had a phone call from daughter Helen en route to her workplace. She told me she had left her lunch on the table at home and suggested that I collect it and have it for my lunch.  When I asked her what it was I decided that it was deserved of a drive to her workplace.  I collected it and had a pleasant 30 minute drive to deliver it to its creator. And it was indeed a creation....Thai Beef Salad:  beef marinated with chilli, coriander, soy, garlic, fish sauce and lime juice. The salad was a full on affair too.  

Only five days until we depart for a week in Bali.  Our plane leaves Perth international Airport at 7.50am and we have decided not to park my car in the sun at the long term parking station, but I will drive to cousin Val’s place, park the car and her granddaughter will drive us to the airport.  We can get a cab back to Val’s house upon our return.  Another plan we had considered, was for me to drive to Val’s; park the car and order a cab.  There are many stories about cabs turning up late and we didn’t want that.  Recently the W.A. Taxi Board has placed a $9. fee on ordered cabs to ensure there is incentive for drivers to arrive on time when a cab is pre-ordered.  Still sounded dodgy and the grandaughter chauffeur is the best idea we have had so far.   Hope she doesn’t go partying and forget us early Sunday morning.

Red cars go faster

We all know that red cars go faster.  The colour of a car seems to be very significant to journalists as well as drivers.  I must do some research to see if the colour of a vehicle matches the circumstances.  This is a snippet from a news article is from yesterday’s news online......’The men were in a blue Commodore travelling east on Morley Drive.’  

Tomorrow is Parents’ Relief Day when kids return to school in Western Australia.  Shopkeepers too are greatly relieved at the return of the nuisance shoplifters to their place of education.   Our daughter Helen is back at her previous school in a southern suburb which has a dubious clientele.  I cannot divulge any of the problems she encounters with pupils and parents, but the Education Department acknowledges the problem and pays each teacher a nominal sum of $50.00 per week extra for their efforts in coping in a Hard to Staff School.

A coincidental blast from the past

My friend Dennis has been thinking of upgrading his computer for a few weeks and one came up on a list I belong to: The Western Australian Macintosh Users’ Group. It was advertised to the members by Ronni. I have not met Ronni face to face, but have corresponded with her and read her posts for a number of years. She is one of the group’s Mac Gurus and runs a professional Mac business as well as dispensing clear, precise instructions to members who post their Mac problems on the list. I told her that my friend is interested and she gave me her son-in-law’s address and contact details and yesterday we went to the address to pay up and grab the iMac. When the door was opened, a smiling Nikki welcomed us in. Nikki was a teaching colleague of mine at Willetton SHS and I had not seen her in the 15 years since I retired. Her mum, Ronni mentioned that a Kevin Lock was coming to buy the Mac. She didn’t think it was going to be me, but decided it had to be as mum had informed her that Kevin was a teacher at WSHS. A coincidental blast from the past. Lovely Gal!

 Today I am hosting a get-together of a few of 'we oldies' as mum would say. We all need a bit of cheering up! I have mowed the lawns, cleaned off the magpie poo on the outside furniture and am preparing my kind of food for this afternoon. It is quite hot outside (31˚C/ 83˚F) and so it will be inside in air conditioning. Another good reason to move inside is that blowflies can smell tacos from 300 metres away.

Bird of Paradise

Eeek!  Apple Computer shares took a tumble!  They are now worth only  $US458.30 each share.  Wish I had taken them up when Apple booted Steve Jobs out in 1985 when the shares were around $US 22.00 each.

The media seems to seize on anything that happens at Apple predicting doom.   On the ‘net’ one can find thousands of people showering invective on Apple and Apple users.  Nutters!

Although I taught in Papua New Guinea for around 10 years, I never saw a Bird of Paradise in the wild.  I have seen them in a bird park, but have never seen them do the various mating dances.  Here is a short  film courtesy of Cornell University showing the wonderful plumage and dances the males perform to attract mates.  

I have only crows, magpies and mudlarks in my backyard.   The magpies are unafraid and venture into the house if I leave a door ajar. Even though I feed ‘em they pay me back by crapping on the tiles.   The crows are very timid and seem to realise that they are not the world’s favourite bird.  Don’t think a crow will ever eat from my hand as the magpies do.

Jacob and Josef Kohn furniture

I have just done some repairs on an old bentwood chair.  The labels underneath the seat tells me it was made by J & J Kohn in Austria, probably about 100 years ago.  These chairs are not unique, thousands of them were made in four factories in Austria, Moravia (Google that one), Poland and Russia.  By 1900, J & J Kohn employed 6,300 workers in their factories producing 5,500 pieces of furniture per day.   When we returned from six years teaching in Papua New Guinea we had bought a colonial residence in the suburb of Bicton and a dining suite of Kohn chairs was in the house.  They are still in good condition.

                   I built the table to sort of match the chairs.

By the time Adolph came to power, J & J Kohn had long gone and their company had merged with a German furniture maker.  Wouldn't have been good to have a business name of Kohn then.

Good luck stories

Martin rode his bike over to a nearby suburb to get a script filled at the pharmacy.  Bit of a panic when he came home and realised that he had lost the house keys.  We jumped in the car and retraced his route home, but no luck.    The keys weren’t labelled with a name or address, so I had two new keys cut.  Later Martin went back to the small shopping centre and found that someone had handed them in to the pharmacy.  Amazing as there are lots of odd folk around there.  Thanks to whoever was the good Samaritan.

Yesterday I listened to a radio interview with a Australian Rules Football commentator.  This fellow is known Australia wide as probably the best commentator on the big game.  He mentioned that when he was still a footy star back in the 70s his name was pulled out of the barrel for the Vietnam draft.  When he fronted for the medical, both he and another star footy player were rejected because of a BS (read false) medical condition.   Both knew that they were given an out.  A couple of years ago a state cricketer drove drunk, ran into a couple of parked cars and ran from the scene.  In court he was about to lose his driver’s licence, but pleaded that he didn’t know how to read the bus timetables to get to cricket practice, so the beak let him keep his licence.   The magistrate was most probably a cricket tragic.
Lucky for some!

Old Geezer's walking Stick

I dropped in on Carole and Dennis this morning.  Den is pushing to buy an iPad and Carole has caved in and he is picking it up tomorrow.  I gave him a short intro on its use (I am also new to the iPad and am on a gentle learning curve).  I am a better two-finger typist on a regular keyboard than I am on the iPad keyboard.  I am also a slow texter (is that the correct term) on the phone.

I will take it with me to Bali.  

Dennis recently received a Xmas gift from his kids.  It is an old Geezer’s walking stick with a rear vision mirror, bicycle bell and foam rubber drink holder.  He reckons that if he had any real money he would disinherit his kids.

Yesterday I had a visit from an ex-student Mel and her mother.  Mel is over from Melbourne for her brother's engagement party.  She asked me to take the photos, but I begged off and loaned her my camera gear.  Too old for that stuff!

Mel and Mum in a photo pinched from Mel's Facebook page.

Housos

This morning I bought a two-disk DVD set of an Australian comedy TV series, ‘Housos’.

Housos are people who live in State Housing accommodation.  The series is very vulgar, liberally peppered with expletives, sexual references and a huge put down of people who live in public housing.  That being said, it is very funny.  It was created by Paul Fenech of  FAT PIZZA and SWIFT and SHIFT COURIERS, two similar non-PC series.

I thought it was a bit over the top, but when later I visited a local Shopping centre I  saw some local housos screaming obscenities at each other inside the mall. Both factions were young women wheeling prams threatening to ‘F...... kill that F...... kid of yours and then you...slut!’   As the two groups separated the war continued by mobile phone.  People were a bit concerned and shocked....I almost laughed out loud

Martin is home

Our son has returned from Melbourne and moved in with me.  I have appointed him my Tech Guru and he is converting LPs into Cds on a turntable I bought some months ago, but never got around to figuring the how part.   

Next he has the task of reading the 62 page instruction manual on a Sony digital Video camera and doing a few copying jobs converting Super 8 film to digital media.  He is pretty smart and probably won’t even read the manual.  Bad habit of mine too!        You remember Super 8 film, don’t you?

The way it was

I was considering trying to finish of a novel my Joan had outlined, but when I read a quote from Stephen Ambrose; a very successful author (Band of Brothers, DDay 6th of June, Eisenhower Biography et al)  I decided I didn’t have the necessary skills that Joan possessed.

Ambrose said..’The number one secret of being a successful writer is to marry an English major.’

At 73 I have just about seen it all evolve.  Mobile phones, personal computers, the Internet, large flat screen TVs, microwave ovens etc etc.

This is how it was back in the 50s

Animal cruelty

I am unsure how a people are determined to be civilised.  Is it through their system of government?  Is it because of their religion, arts and culture. Is it because of the way they treat each other and animals?

Australian exports of live sheep and cattle go to places which seem to care little about the treatment of animals. I surmise that those peoples assume that as the animal is to be slaughtered, it matters little how it is treated before being slaughtered.  More evidence of cruelty to Australian beef exports showed up in the local paper a couple of days ago. 

I wear sandals because of a problem I have with hot feet.   Every time I go out I manage to get at least one pebble in a sandal which requires a soft shoe dance or sandal removal to get rid of the pebble.  What did the Romans do whilst in the heat of battle, or road, viaduct or Colosseum construction when they got pebbles in their sandals?

                                    Roman sandal

47 years

Yesterday was the 47th anniversary of our wedding.  I had been transferred to a southern country town high school where I met my wife to be.  During that year we, or rather Joan, planned our wedding to take place on January 7th 1966.     Joan’s father wasn’t too well off so she sold her Fiat Bambino for the princely sum of £500 which paid for the entire wedding and reception for quite a large guest list....food, entertainment and many drinks.  Try that now!

                                I miss my wife dearly.

Joan in our Jeep in PNG.  This Jeep was a leftover from WW2 fighting in this area.

The photo is a Polaroid instant which had a fixer pad which had to be wiped over the print after it emerged from the camera, thus the streaky appearance

Our son Martin is returning home to live, at least temporarily, with me. His year in Melbourne was a lost year and I am hoping we can get along together and he can secure either employment or start a home-based business such as Webpage design.

Kitchen renovation

My daughter and husband have just finished renovating and painting their kitchen and lounge area.  The painting was a major team effort.  Greg and Claire came up from Busselton down south and spent last weekend at Helen and James’ house. Greg is a professional painter and he directed the team over the two days filling, sanding and painting.  Nice job!

Yesterday the Bamboo floor was installed.  It is tough material and should withstand the hard times their two dogs will give it.  A tiler gave them a bit of pain when he finished the job and left several tiles cracked and chipped.   With a bit of gentle persuasion, he returned and removed the damaged tiles and laid new ones.   The final touch is a small job for the electrician to mount the wall outlets in the new tiling.

Took a while, but it is very nice.

                                  Click to enlarge

At 73 years of age, I am not really into Facebook, however I was talked into taking a look at it by a friend.   It wasn’t long before I had registered and friends and ex-students were sending those  ‘Jo Blogs wants to be your friend’ notices.  I agreed to most of them and I have around 60 ‘friends’.  I don’t actually talk much with any of them on Facebook, but they are still people I like.

I got a bit of a shock when I received notification of a comment about me on one of my ‘friend’s’ pages.    The comment said...’Kevin Lock, continuing predator’.     I don’t know this person although when I went to his Facebook page I see where he is living and that he was a student at the same school as most of my ex-student ‘friends’.

This fellow may have thought he was writing it to just that one person, but the comment appears on all the ‘friends’ of that person’s pages.  I immediately wrote a comment saying that I hope he wrote that in jest.  No reply for two days, so I again wrote suggesting that it was defamation.  After a couple of days he deleted the comment and I deleted my two comments.    I was shaken by this throwaway remark and it reinforced what I have read about young people being bullied online and committing suicide.

The worst part of this is that it may have sewn a seed of doubt in some readers minds about my character and my entire teaching career.

Destination Bali

Just signed up for a Bali trip.  The local Flight Centre did the job in around 30 minutes and on the 10th of February, cousin Val and I are off for a seven day trip to Bali.

The young lady who arranged everything was charming and very efficient.  I asked if she would mind if I took her photo to put up on my blog.  She was a bit hesitant and probably thought  I was a sleazy old man....don’t blame her; but after she had a quick look at the blog let me take this blurrygraph of her.

She is originally from New Zealand and spent ten years in the NZ Navy.  she looks so young I figure she joined the navy when she was ten.

$31 million OzLotto prize

As Charlie said in Willy Wonka.....’I just thought you would want to know, I didn’t win a Golden Ticket’.

I didn’t win the $30M lotto on Saturday night either.  I didn’t hold much hope as the odds on a $30m prize in Australia are estimated to be around 1 chance in 20,000,000.

Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve.  I have had two invites one from a friend Margaret and another to my daughter’s place for an early night.  I am not feeling too sociable at the moment and may stay home, have a bottle of bubbly and ‘turn in’ nice and early.

I am still finding interesting artefacts of my late wife Joan’s many stashes around the house.  Recently I found a large notepad with outlines for several novels she was going to start writing.   One had real promise.  It is a saga of several generations of a  fictitious colonial family in  Papua New Guinea.   Most interesting reading her notes and plot ideas.  It is a pity she never got around to writing it.  I don’t have her writing skills or I would attempt to finish it.  

Miss you Joan.

Christmas 2012

We had a small family group for Christmas Day lunch, with sufficient food for a dozen more people.  Roast pork, ham, prawns, ceviche, salads, fruit and a lovely cake and ample drinks.   It reminded me of a quite wonderful song by Tim Minchin called White Wine in the Sun.   You can see/hear it on Youtube here.

Time for the cake..nephew Brian and his wife Lilli, my daughter Helen, brother Graham and son-in-law James with Kev in the background.

The roses live comfortably in a large pot with my wife Joan’s ashes.  She would approve.

Damn those Mayans

So today is The Day.     I have decided not to do anything which may be redundant.  No kitchen cleanup, shopping, buying fuel etc. Haven’t decided whether to clean my teeth or even wipe my bum.

Read about it all explained here.   Better read it soon though, as it is All Over Red Rover at around 10pm tonight; doesn’t matter where you are in the world.

One of the possible predictions for today is the sun burning out.  It could well be so!

The distance to the sun from earth is calculated as 92,955,807 miles and the speed of light is 186,282 miles per second.  That means that in about 8 minutes the last of the sun’s warming rays would cease and we will all start turning on torches and lighting fires to keep warm.

On the other hand I will continue cleaning up the house for the family gathering here on Christmas Day.  Got to make some Ceviche, buy a ham and drinks and ring the mob to see what they are bringing for the Post-Apocalyptic celebrations.

Family History

My cousin Ted is a bit of a family history buff.  He recently returned from a European trip where he traced his (our) antecedents back to 1700+ in Wales.  The Lee family is on my mother’s side and the family had an interesting circuitous journey from Wales to Western Australia.   My brother, cousin and I and Ted’s immediate family met at a tavern for lunch last week and he gave us each a thumb drive with photos of birth, marriages and death certificates, churches and gravesites etc.  Most interesting day.

The Locks (my father’s side of our family) have also been traced back to Somerset and we have met a distant relative from there who now lives in Queensland.  Sorry to report that neither side of our families have convicts in them.

Both families emigrated from Britain to other states, Victoria and South Australia and later moved to Western Australia in the early 1900s.

Both my father and mothers' families were farmers in the Western Australian wheatbelt out from the town of Narrogin.  I have fond memories of spending time with grandparents, uncles and aunties from the Lees and the Locks during school holidays.

I wonder if someone will look back on me in the future.

Santa is in store!

Father Christmas is in store!

My friend Joy took four of her grandkids along to see FC at a large shopping centre near her home.  After a long wait in line she and the kids eventually got to see him.  He told Joy that they were a very nice looking family and that if he wasn’t so busy he would take them to the North Pole to have dinner with him.

    

Joy asked him what he would be having to eat for dinner.  He told them that he was going to be eating reindeer.  Rudolph had been naughty and he was getting the chop and into the pot.  The kids didn’t seem fazed by this and one of the younger ones asked Santa if he knew Rudolph. “know him?  I am going to eat him’ replied Santa. ‘He has been very bad’.  And whale was also on the menu. 'If you eat whale you will go up and down' declared Santa.

This Santa is either very perceptive to deliver that speech to kids who would not  be traumatised, or is a complete nutter.   Joy's grandkids weren't traumatised and she was amused.    Me too!

Business is booming!

The furore over the prank phone call to King Edward V11 hospital by a couple of young Australian DJs has gone feral in Britain.

It seemed harmless enough, but the nurse who was sucked in by the call thought it really was QE2 and Phil calling up to see how Prince William’s wife Catherine was going.  A couple of days later she sadly took her own life.  The British press and many Britishers are baying for justice.    

DJs the world over pull pranks...it is almost mandatory for them to do so.

The notes the nurse left before her demise have not been made public, but it is said that what she wrote in one of the notes was highly critical of the hospital administration.  It would seem that they may have treated her badly and shamed her.

I wonder if any suicides occurred after the 1938 War of the Words broadcast scare narrated by Orson Welles.  It wasn’t a prank, but people tuning in to the radio play late, thought it was really was a report of an alien invasion.  Thousands of people panicked.

Australia and Australians are regular targets of the Brits.....much of it deserved.  Bring on the Republic!

Business is booming!  At least the nail business is.  Every shopping centre has a nail treatment centre.  I hesitate to look into them as I walk by, but I have never seen them without customers.  These ‘treatment centres’ seem to be run mainly by Chinese folk.

I find it amazing how different nationalities tend to run different businesses.  Service stations often seem to have Indian owners.  Lotto agencies are popular with Chinese folk.   Interesting; not important, but interesting.  The last time we visited the U.S. we noticed that, in California at least, motels were often run by Indians.

The Hiri

A little more about Papua New Guinea.

In the years of my first stint as a teacher in PNG, I was Teacher in Charge of a primary school in the Gulf of Papua.  The Gulf is a swampy area with lots of sago palms from which sago (not as we know it) was produced and bundled for sale in Port Moresby.   It was transported by coastal traders.    

In times past....long past, it was part of a trading journey by the Motu people from around what came to be know as Port Moresby.  The Motu were great pot makers, having abundant clay deposits and an annual journey by Motuans in large Lakatoi before the Laurabada (South East winds) exchanged pots for bundles of sago with the people of the Gulf.   The Lakatoi could not easily ‘tack’ across the wind and crews had to wait until they could run back home in front of the Lahara (North West winds).    When I was at Arehava in the early 1960s, villagers were still using Motuan clay pots for cooking.   I imagine aluminium pots now rule.

That trading journey was called The Hiri and because the Lakatoi  had to wait for the change of season and the arrival of the Lahara, the Gulf people learned to speak a simplified version of Motu, later called Hiri Motu.  Hiri Motu became one of the two Lingua Franca in Papua New Guinea, the other one was Tok Pisin (talk pidgin).  Motu spread throughout Papua mainly through its use by the PNG Constabulary and eventually was renamed Police Motu.  

Picture of a Lakatoi from the 1920s

Halal/Kosher

Australian live cattle and sheep exports have come in for a lot of greeny criticism of late.  We have seen how middle east countries and Indonesian abattoirs have been slaughtering our exported animals most cruelly.  Up until now there has been a feeling of  dismay at mainly Muslim countries’ treatment of  our exports, but yesterday it seems that an Israeli abattoir is just as bad.    Surely it is time to do Halal/Kosher slaughter of beef and lamb in Australian abattoirs where there are strict controls covering animal cruelty.

I believe that every meat eater would rather not know anything about the killing of animals for our delicious meat products.  I don’t want to know about it.

In the early 1970s we brought home one of my Papua New Guinean students with us on annual leave. A neighbour of my mother and father was a government Meat Inspector at a local abattoir here in Western Australia and he arranged for me and Michael to visit the abattoir where he was stationed.  At the time of our visit, cattle were being ‘processed’.  From a large pen, steers were herded up a ramp to a point where each was killed with a shot to the head by a special pistol.   Other cows in line must have perceived that something bad was about to happen to them because they were making loud noises which I had not heard from cattle before.  We drove home from that place without conversation.

When I was a youngster, I would visit my family’ farms during holiday times.  I often saw the slaughter of a sheep for the family table.  I can recall the sheep trussed up in a wheelbarrow, its large eyes in panic as its throat was cut and allowed to bleed out and die after a few minutes.

No pictures for this post.

Bon appetit.

Big Bang Theory

Feeling a little down this evening with my daughter and her hubby in Melbourne.  I often join them for Friday drinkies.   That was until I remoted to The Big Bang Theory, and things got much better.   I love that show...and Seinfeld and Becker etc etc.

I can watch, and sort of, enjoy the British shows on TV, but never get a charge out of them like the BBT and other U.S. quality shows.

I guess I am an Americaphile, but I cannot stand the so called ‘info commercials’ selling American products on an endless loop on TV; products such as non-stick fry- pans, steam cleaners, magic paint restorers etc etc.  Yuck!

Back to my bottle of Bubbly.

Replacement GPS

I have received the replacement car GPS from a Chinese firm operating out of Sydney.  I am well satisfied with their service.  The GPS is obviously made in China because of the Chinglish text in the instruction manual, but I am very impressed with its operation and many features.  Also with the price of A$87.00 which includes unlimited world map updates for free.

I don’t think I will be using many of the features, such as Bluetooth phone calls, the photo viewer, eBook reader, audio player and games. The voice is very bossy when I exceed the speed limit which is a good thing.

A friend, Margaret, has had a handyman come and repair her sheet steel roof. I had previously done a temporary repair to stop her back room flooding during recent heavy rain, so I climbed up on the roof to check out what he had done.  I have included a photo of his handiwork and even though I am not a roofing tradesman I could not have left the job as he has.  All the sharp bits left curled up could be fatal to any dumb birds landing there.

Jaberwocky

Yesterday, with a more than an ample serving of Champagne, I had a small mimsy (Lewis Carrol - Jaberwocky) thinking of my late wife Joan.

I don’t normally feel depressed about things, but I am allowed to feel a bit mimsy on occasions.   

Find Jaberwocky here. 

Here is a link to an award winning short film. Quite wonderful!

116 all up

Yesterday was our daughter Helen’s birthday and it is mine today.   I was invited around to Helen and James’ house for dinner and an exchange of presents.  Helen  turned 43 and I have been around for 73 years.  Helen’s Birthday Party is on the weekend.  Today I am having a few friends around for food, drinks and a few laughs. 

On Tuesday, Helen went for an early morning interview for a teaching position at a nearby primary school.  The school is in a good area and has  a good reputation with many innovative projects.  At the interview, she was told there were 188 applicants for the position, but only a small group getting to the interview stage.  She felt it went well, but knows that there are other factors in employment, such as the fact that there may already be a ‘chosen one’ and the interview process may well be merely a matter of form.  I hope she is successful.

Some more pics of Helen at various stages of the 43 years.

Martin and Helen at a swimming hole in Papua New Guinea 1973

Helen and Joan

Helen and Martin

Graduation Edith Cowan University

  

                                          Helen and James' wedding

When Helen was about 8 years of age she thought that we were going to replace her with a new daughter.  She left us this note and hid in the back yard.

Losing things

My friend Margaret is also a single person.  She lost her husband Haddon to Prostate Cancer about two and a half years ago.   She is a caring person and our small group meets at her house about once a week for oldies tea and conversation.  Margaret can talk under water!

She wrote this piece recently and I thought it well worth sharing.  I enjoyed it.

                                               Click to enlarge

Picture of Margaret and her late husband Haddon.  I miss Haddon's company.  We were, what we in Australia call, 'mates' for around 58 years.

The Oyster Beds

This morning a small group of ex Rover Scouts  had a reunion at a riverside restaurant in Fremantle.  This group has largely survived together over the 50+ years since we were active in the Scouts.   Many stories told and I was most impressed with the food and service.  I am the youngest of this group at nearly 73, and hope we can all stick around for a few more years.

The restaurant is the Red Herring and our daughter and husband James had their small wedding reception there in December 2010.  It has been on the river for many years and was originally an oyster farm.   Our group were regular patrons on a Friday night after Scout meeting when it was called The Oyster Beds.  Very up-market compared to those days when the popular fare was spag bolognese

The Sport of Kings?

Celebrated Australian Jockey, Damien Oliver, has been chastised for being naughty and placing a $10,000 bet on another horse in a race in which he was a rider.  He received a 8 month suspension.  For his $10,000 bet he claimed to have won just $11,000 on the race winner.   Short odds!  Did our Damien ride a slow race?

Shock horror!    Does anyone really believe that he is the only jockey, owner or trainer to do the same?  Graft and corruption is rife in the industry.   

My sister and husband owned a couple of racehorses and I recall Joan and I attending the Perth Cup with them to see one of their hopefuls race in one of the minor races on Cup Day.  To me horses are brown and the jockeys wear colourful garb and that is all I know about it.  On this occasion, Shirl and Don watching their nag streaking ahead of the field, suddenly yelled out a number of expletives as they saw their jockey stand up and grab a handful of reins and sit back down in the saddle.    We later watched a re-run on a screen and even I could see what happened.  

Our tax accountant recently told me that he was once a part owner of a not very good racehorse.  Being a sort of insider he suggested that some races are setups for the jockeys to cash in on selected races and tracks.    So, if you are going to bet on a nag you probably will have as much chance selecting a nag which has an appealing name or use a pin and blindfold to select your horse.

The car GPS I was so happy with, died on day two, so I bundled it up and posted it Parcel Postage to NSW for a return.  I have been watching its journey east on Australia Post's tracking service.  It has arrived at the retailer and I guess they will test it to see if I am not an old fart who doesn't understand electronics and post me a new one.

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28 car motorcade

There has been much written about a couple of top U.S. generals and their philandering in the last few days.  I tried to fathom it all out, but gave up.  Mistresses, emails, jealous spats etc.

General Petraeus has coughed up to his affair and smoothed it over with his wife saying that his wife ‘is far better than he deserves’.  All better!?

In all the words written about the affair(s) I found these the most incredible...

                               A 28 car motorcade?  

Of skinks, goannas and lizards

Australia has a number of Goannas some of which live in suburbia.  A couple of days ago I photographed a ‘Bobtail’ goanna in my back yard.  The Bobtail has a long list of alternative names and herpetologists claim it has more names than any other lizard.  It has a blue tongue and one of its many names is Bluetongue lizard.  It is quite a slow moving lizard and its most popular dish is the snail; probably because that is easy for it to catch.  

Another Australia-wide goanna is the Sand Goanna, or in Western Australia, commonly called the racehorse goanna. Local aboriginals call it a Bungarra and that name is commonly used in W.A.   It is called a racehorse for its speed over short distances.  It runs up trees when threatened and when I was quite young my uncles and grandparents always warned me not to stand still in open fields in case a Racehorse goanna was nearby and decided to scoot up me thinking that I was a small tree.   Methinks a country myth.

         Racehorse goannas can grow to over 1 metre in length.

Six degrees of separation

This morning I had a visit from two ex-students from Willetton SHS.  I taught them at different stages of my time at that school and they recently met at university where they are studying.   Hwee is studying to be a Paramedic and Julie is soon to finish a nursing degree.  They didn’t attend Willetton at the same time and in the usual fashion of Six Degrees of Separation found that they  both knew me.

Much talk about other students and teachers of the time and we enjoyed some nice food for morning tea.   Hwee’s mum made me a large curry and rice.   Ta Mum!

This little get-together has left this old fella feeling very happy.  Thanks girls. 

Total Solar Eclipse

Total Solar Eclipse over Australia

Here is a timetable for the eclipse

What? Western Australia misses out again.

Secede I say!

Yesterday I took delivery of a new GPS.  It is a 7" model and comes with many useful functions including eBook reader, music and video player.  It cost just $87 postage included.

In the packet was a strange extra which I cannot see what it does/holds.   I will contact the supplier for info.  Is it a phone holder?

  At this stage I am most impressed as it also offers unlimited free updates to the maps for which my other GPS charges about $160.

Portuguese Millipedes

I was recently asked to help a friend’s daughter resurrect a PC.  I do not normally work with Windows Operating Systems and in setting up a newer PC for her, went on a steep learning curve.     I removed the hard drive with all her data from the older PC and installed it in the replacement box.   It didn’t want to play for me.   

Apple computers (Macs) are only built by one manufacturer, Apple.   If I rehouse an Apple Hard Drive in another Mac it will run with no problems. 

There are probably thousands of builders of PCs and each machine has specific drivers for the mouse, keyboard, graphics and sound etc.  This newer PC is a Hewlett Packard and to get the drivers, one has to be online and download them for that specific model of HP.

It took about an hour to get it all running and at my age, I have resolved not to venture into PC land again.  I have a PC in my workshop setup specifically to download video from a camera and I must find a driver for the sound card to have it all running properly.

Most PC users will not come across this problem as they won’t be swapping Hard Drives from machine to machine.

Recent rains and warm weather have brought on a plague of Portuguese Millipedes at my daughter’s house.  Whilst they were away on a trip I sprayed around the base of outer walls with a residual product which terminated thousands of them overnight.  Portuguese Millipedes are not true millipedes and they are an introduced pest first found in South Australia and since spread across the South of Australia.  Another case of illegal immigrants.

See here...Portuguese Millipedes 

Winners and losers

In yesterday’s edition of ‘Shorpy’ there was a photograph and story about the Nash Metropolitan car.  It was a strange looking thing and didn’t last too long in production.  I recently saw one outside a pub in a nearby country town.  The original prototype was developed by Nash/Kelvinator and its designer might well have designed refrigerators.

Around the same time an Australian company which made washing machines and cement mixers tried their hand at building a car.  It only lasted two years in production and apart from its crazy design features, was introduced at the same time as The Morris Minor.  The Minor was only £68  dearer than the Lightburn Zeta, the score was Morris Minor 1.   Zeta 0.

My father-in-law bought one new and I drove it to a country field day.  It was not a great engineering feat.  It had a fibreglass body, a two cylinder engine with a motorcycle transmission with no reverse.  To reverse one had to stop the engine, then start the engine in reverse and that gave you four gears in reverse as well as forward.   

         The Lightburn cement mixers were good machines.

                      The first Morris Minor had some class.

Obamacare

Congrats Mr Obama!    I was hoping for this outcome.  Of course even though I cannot vote in a U.S. election...I could not avoid the  avalanche of media coverage world wide.  The world was pretty interested in the outcome too.  I guess the foreign policy of a new President might concern some peoples.....especially Iran.

I was hoping that Obama would be returned merely for the healthcare reforms he had introduced for the poor. Romney was going to dismantle ‘Obamacare’ as soon as he ascended to the throne.    It would seem, at least to me, that a sizable portion of the nation has little sympathy for the poor as if it is somehow their fault.  In Australia there is a similar feeling amongst the populace.  

Over the last year I have been getting personal messages from the Governor of Delaware, Jack Markell, urging me to get behind him in the upcoming elections.  This morning I received a letter of thanks for my support for him.  Thanks Jack, but I don’t vote in the U.S. and I don’t know how you thought I did.  In fact, I live near Fremantle Western Australia,  just 19,643 kilometres from Washington.

The Saga of the Turkey Roll

Brother Graham and I went to Fremantle for lunch today.  When we had finished eating I showed him an old Lotto script which had been under a fridge magnet for about 6 years.  I had decided to use it to buy a lotto ticket in tonight’s $20M draw.  He suggested that we use the Woolworths underground carpark and buy my ticket at the lotto agent near Woollies.  There is a $2.00 parking fee which can be redeemed with a minimum purchase of $10.00 at Woolworths, so we looked around for something I needed for around $10.

Graham bought a small Turkey roll and suggested I did the same.   As we approached the checkout, he realised that my roll was only $9.80 so exchanged mine for his $10.60 roll.  When I had gone through the register I realised that I had forgotten to tell the cashier that I had the parking ticket.  ‘Sorry, too late’, she said.    I gave the parking ticket to bro, who now didn’t have a purchase of $10.00.     He dashed off to change the cheapo roll for one slightly more that the $10. minimum purchase.    The cashier and her friends are probably still laughing about the two old fellas. 

The road to Independence

Yesterday I was listening to ABC radio when a woman called in asking for advice about what to do with a Peacock in her backyard.  she didn’t mention her suburb, but it was obviously the Peacock I wrote about yesterday.  Call back resulted in many suggestions for the lady....stuffed and baked Peacock etc etc.

When we worked in Papua New Guinea in the 1970s I was Manager of a Vocational Centre in the East Sepik District at a place named Bainyik.  The aim of Vocational Centres was to train students in marketable skills such as building, mechanics, welding, concrete, small scale store management and animal husbandry etc etc, in fact anything which might make the student self-sufficient.  With a staff of four we worked with approximately 60 boarders for a full year.  We contracted to do work for different government departments building aid posts in remote villages, houses for teachers and village projects.  One project was to erect an Aid Post in a remote village.  The project was given to us by one Harvey Mack, a Patrol Officer at government station named Dreikikir.  Harvey was also a Western Australian and when Independence came to PNG we both (with families) returned to live back home.  My wife Joan and I went back to teaching.  Harvey started a trucking company which has grown from a couple of trucks to a 100 employee business.  He has bases in Fremantle, Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney.

Yesterday I caught up with Harvey after 29 years.  I visited his base at Forrestfield and was very impressed with his business and his style of management.   We plan to meet again soon and reassess our time and achievements in our PNG days.    Both of us were adamant that we were most privileged to have been there and participated in building the road to Independence.  However, neither of us wish to go back and see how it is now.

Harvey's business page is here.

Suburban Peacock

Early this morning I had a call from a friend who asked me what I knew about Peacocks.  ‘.There is one in my back yard.’ he said.      I grabbed a camera and went to take a few snaps of his bird.   It is  strange to see a Peacock in suburbia.   We figured that it is someone’s pet and it had escaped.   It had been in James’ yard for a few days and when I was checking it out it flew out to a high wall.    They can be very noisy birds at times and could give neighbours the Heebie Jeebies.  

Heebie Jeebies is a term from an old American comic strip Barnie Google....from which the name Google comes.   Check out Google on wikipedia

Enough trivia!