A bit late

We went to a swapmeet this morning at Kardinya Shopping centre. Kardinya is the site of the first K Mart in Western Australia(?). I remember people travelling from all over to shop at this new store. Earlier, supermarkets sounded the death knell for corner shops and this K Mart looked like doing the same for department stores. Not so!

There are a few friendly corner-type stores around, one being the Fremantle General Store. The old corner store didn't have to bother with use-by dates. We checked to see if a can of something was still OK by looking at the ends to see if they were blown. Sugar came to the store in a hessian bag and was scaled out using a sugar scoop. Very little packaged food then!
When I was a lad, the bread was delivered by horse and cart and milk was delivered into a billy can left on the front verandah. The milk was randomly checked by some government person with a hydrometer to see if the milkman was watering our milk down. Another great scam stymied by the introduction of bottles.

Tom The Cheap, Tom Wardle, later to become Sir Thomas Wardle, started the first supermarkets in W.A. and no doubt he pinched the idea from the U.S. They were very successful with the first personal shopping experience for Western Australians where they actually selected their own purchases before paying at a checkout. Previously shoppers had to tell the storekeeper what they wanted and the item(s) were put on the counter and added up before money exchanged hands. No plastic shopping bags then.

Anyway we bought a few things at the swapmeet. I bought two 1 litre bottles of 'torch fuel' for one dollar each from a stall that was obviously a fire sale from a hardware store. This torch fuel is actually kerosene which normally sells for about three times that amount. I will go back and get a few more...great for cleaning. Also picked up a couple of video tapes for 50c each.

Joan bought a couple of books including an old book titled Sketching and Rendering in Pencil.

Bali travel saga

Bali is a three hour flight from Perth and it is quite difficult to get two seats in business to get there. On one hand we hear that the Balinese are concerned that Australians are not returning to Bali after a couple of horrific terrorist bombings and on the other it is very difficult to get a seat on a plane. We did think that going business rather than cattle-class would get us on, but it seems that we were wrong. We are wait-listed for one of three days and still no joy. We have just told our travel agent (well, he is not just our travel agent) that we are prepared to travel in the following week and hope to get a result tomorrow. Hope!

I did a bit of a Steptoe and Son yesterday and today collecting donated printers etc for possible inclusion in the Bali project. Paul, a friend, gave me a Brother all-in-one scanner/printer/copier. Lovely machine! The only thing wrong with it is that it had run out of ink. It seems that the ink is dearer that the machine, so Paul bought a new printer. I will suss out the possibility of filling the tanks with bulk ink. I have one-litre bottles of the three ink colours supposedly specifically for Canon printers. Tomorrow I will seek information from my friendly cartridge re-filler to see if there really is a problem using my Canon ink in other printer brands. Bet there isn't.

Absent Friends

We got a Christmas card from Tom and Carolyn today. Not for Christmas 2007 - this was last year's card that was returned to sender, resent, and has now arrived.

We met Tom and Carolyn in Popondetta in 1974. They were fairly new doctors from Canada working in conditions that must have seemed extremely primitive to them. After 4 years in the Sepik in PNG, the Popondetta hospital was almost state of the art as far as we were concerned. We socialised and when we went finish (back to Australia) we kept in contact.

When we met we had two kids - they had none. By the time we visited them in New Brunswick in 1990 they had five, and a few years later added a sixth.

This is what we garnered from the card. Son #1 is a neurological registrar (aka brain surgeon) who married a lawyer last year. Son #2 is doing a PhD and has to spend a semester in Paris - poor soul. Son #3 is teaching in Oman and doing lots of travelling (hasn't ventured to Oz yet). Daughter #1 is also teaching (Calgary), daughter #2 is in first year at Uni in Nova Scotia and #3 is in Year 9 and very sporty. Wow! They certainly did the right thing as parents.

We would like to meet up with them again, but there is no chance on our July trip. We will be pushing it to meet up with Ann (Kevin's cousin) and her husband Doug who live in British Columbia. Definitely no possibility of getting to the Maritime Provinces.

Besides, Tom and Carolyn have never visited Western Australia. We will have to keep putting forward the idea that a BIG TRIP is a necessary part of their future.

More travel stuff

Yesterday we went to a travel agent and booked our Bali trip. It looked pretty good. A$1353 each which includes flying business class return, airport transfers and one week's accomodation at a nice hotel. Today we heard that the plane is booked out and we are on a waiting list. Joan asked the man to try and get us on an earlier or later flight. We should know tomorrow.

We have also sussed out a safe and reliable driver who does an all-inclusive full day's tour for rp450,000 per day which is roughly A$62. He won't have to take us touring, but will have to sharpen up the English skills when we get him to translate the operating instructions for the computers.

I am selling parts from a car that I bought for my son as a spare parts bank. He has a company vehicle and has sold his own car. There have been a few calls usually about the parts that are already gone and if we don't sell most of it by the time we are to go to Bali I will get it taken away by a scrap dealer. The dealers pay for the shell with a Woolworths shopping voucher to the value of $50. That's not too bad as I paid $80 for the whole thing. It has many good parts and I hate to see good stuff go into a crusher.

Snails and the Ark

I get an email newspaper from News.com.au. It often contains interesting stuff that the local daily rag doesn’t cover. In today’s posting there is an article about Indian airline hostesses being stood down because they were overweight. They took the airline to court to protest unfair dismissal. Their claim was dismissed by judge Rekha Sharma and in his summing up said:

‘If the air hostesses are asked to battle their bulge..it is not understood how it is in any way unfair, unreasonable and insulting.’
‘If by perseverance the snails could reach the ark, why can’t these worthy ladies stand on and turn the scale?’

We have decided to travel to Bali within a couple of weeks to sort out the problems with our computer installation at Primary School Negeri 1 Benatih. It is going to be quite a task as not one person at the school…teachers or students know any English.

It means a day trip from Sanur up to the school with a driver who is a reasonably good English speaker to help with translation and a second trip to the school as a follow up later in the week. We figure that we need time with some teachers and especially four or five intelligent students. I think we all know that kids can learn new technology much quicker that adults.

This trip will be in business class as it allows us 30kg luggage each and we will be able to take another computer, printer and digital camera. It costs about $300 extra each to upgrade to business. Spend the kids’ inheritance.

We will of course enjoy Bali and buy the obligatory Rolex watches and copy DVDs.
Australian customs don’t seem to bother with such things as long as they are not brought into Aus. in commercial quantities.

Thomas Graham Lee

A little more about the career of T.G. Lee.

Gray Lee moved through the ranks over his career. Whilst head of the Liquor and Gaming Squad he realised that the gaming houses in Perth were only being raided once a year in November and only about six people were charged each time. He decided to remedy this situation and changed his Sergeant and without warning arrested 30 ‘prominent’ people in a club. They all pleaded not guilty, so he summonsed them as witnesses against the proprietor and they collapsed and all changed to plead guilty.

He went on to be the Police Chief State Prosecutor retiring after 38 years in the force as a Superintendent and recognised with the awarding of the Queen’s Police Medal.




Snip from the Australian Roll of Honour









After he retired he enjoyed being ‘council for the defence’ for friends and family even avoiding a Multinova speed-camera conviction himself.

The railway carriage he lived in along with his notes are in the Kalgoorlie Museum.

Lake Davilak

This morning we walked around Lake Davilak in Manning Park. The lake is quite small and has been almost completely dry during the summer. Over the past few weeks we have some good rains and Lake Davilak is once again a Lake. Not so yet for Bibra and North Lake, also near our house.

Most people think the name Davilak is from a pioneering family in the area, but the truth of the matter is that it most probably originated from aborigines believing that devils lived in the lake after dark....'Devil Lake'. Another theory is that an itinerant named Davies camped there and the Davilak name came from Davies Lake. I'll settle for Devil Lake.

This afternoon we went north of the river (we south of the river folks do venture north sometimes) to visit our in-laws Dorothy and Mike. Mike has severe Parkinsons Disease dyskinesia and is awaiting a deep brain stimulation implant operation. He has not thrown in the towel and has many projects on the go; quite a few beyond his ability. He is soon to get an electronic pump to administer his medications automatically and at lower levels over the 24 hours. Hope it improves him before the big operation.

Thomas Graham Lee

Recently I contacted the W.A. Police museum to donate my late uncle’s uniform adornments: badges of rank and medals etc. Before he died he arranged them on a display board.

Graham Lee was born in January 1916 and grew up on the family farm at Toolibin, a wheat and sheep area. He went to school at the Toolibin School which was a one-teacher school on the farm. At age 13 he left school and educated himself by reading books and with the help of teachers boarding at the Lee farm.

Through the depression he trapped rabbits and collected ‘dead’ wool and later became a shearer owning his own plant.

Later he applied to join the police force and commenced training in July 1938. His first permanent posting was to Kalgoorlie which was a tough mining town. The day he arrived at Kalgoorlie, the lead story in the Kalgoorlie Miner newspaper was about Arthur Shackleton who had beaten Don Bradman’s score by being arrested 334 times for drunkenness. Each time he was arrested his horse and wagon was taken to the police station until Shackleton was released. At odd times the horse tired of waiting for his master outside the pub and made its own way to the police station to be fed.

Some of his co-workers called him ‘Nelly Lee’ as they considered him to be a bit of an old woman. He was a very straight cop and the fact that his superiors warned him to keep off the brothels and gambling dens didn’t deter him from booking a few. He was punished by being sent out on the ‘Wood Line’ to live in a railway carriage at the end of the woodcutters train line where wood was collected for the water distilleries in Kalgoorlie.

He retired as a Superintendent in 1976.

maybe more later on T G Lee

The Infallable Falled

Joan is very sharp at writing the English language and is always 'there' for me when I mis-spell a word. Early this morning I was re-reading a previous post which she had written in March and found a spelling mistake. Could it have been a typo?

Pretty embarrassing, especially as it is a word we are both very familiar with and scorn people who mis-spell and pronounce it incorrectly. Prostate/prostrate. I took some pleasure in telling her and even though people are not going to backtrack too much into our blog, she changed it to the correct spelling.

After my prostate operation I was prostrate in bed for a few days.

[Comment by Joan: I never claimed to be the Pope, so there!]

More Woodwork

I asked Kevin to make me a little wooden loom today since he had had so much success with yesterday's project.

He ended up making two because I had not clearly thought out my requirements. I am very happy with the final model. I don't know what happened to the prototype.

Now I just need to talk him into some more projects. Ummm - shelves in the laundry perhaps?

Educational cheating

I admit to being a bit of a cheat with a small project I am helping a grade 7 pupil with. Her class (at a Baptist College) was given an assignment to 'Design and Build a Hot Rod'. Individuals could choose between gravity power, solar power or by rubber band/spring/air/
water etc.

This young girl decided to select rubber band power and in her submitted plan showed it being driven by a propeller....bad choice! Her parents couldn't help her and she, although a very pretty girl is apparently not going to end up as an engineer; so Kev was asked to help.

The design was based around a Kleenex tissue box. I bought some balsa wood and constructed the propeller and the framework to support the considerable stress the six 'lackies' would put on the system when wound up. I had a great day trying several configurations and actually got the thing to move. Fortunately, the test of all the vehicles starts on a downhill slope.

Now to justify the cheating. As parents, most people will admit to helping out on their kids' assignments...we did. Secondly, this assignment was set by a teacher who thinks he/she is teaching high school physics. And lastly, I think I can teach her a fair bit by explaining the construction of the Hot Rod, the methods to reduce friction and how a direct drive to the wheels would be more efficient. So there.

Elephantiasis

On Sunday evening there was a TV programme on ABC2 about a woman from Melbourne who is doing wonderful work travelling to Albania (?) to find children who do not have the wherewithal to have corrective surgery for horrific disfigurements.

She arranges for them to be brought back to Australia or the U.S. and after rehabilitation, back to their families. The show followed the return of the kids to somewhat varied welcome from their parents. I guess the results are not always as good as expected.

I had a similar thing happen when I taught in the Sepik District of Papua New Guinea in the 1970s. One of my students had elephantiasis (Lymphatic Filariasis) in one leg. His leg was huge and he had difficulty walking. I heard on the radio that a team of Australian surgeons were on their way to Port Moresby to do corrective surgery on PNG nationals. I contacted Port Moresby General Hospital and the lad was accepted into the programme. He was flown to Port Moresby and the surgery was carried out there.

The district Medical Assistant (often called Medical Assassin) heard of my plan and gave me a fair bit of grief because I didn’t go through him. He didn’t talk to me again.

When the lad returned from Port Moresby, students gathered around to see his leg. He was ashamed of it. From the foot up to the knee was a complete success, but at the knee it ballooned out again and looked very strange. The lad was angry with me and the surgeons.

Sometimes even the best intentions are not good enough.

Winter TV

The home gym is assembled and being used. It took two brains and a bit of argument between the two of us before it was finished.

Winter is well and truly here and it is rather nice to sit down to a bit of TV in front of a nice space heater. Joan doesn't watch TV much, preferring to read. Sometimes this is very frustrating when something turns up on the box which is of interest to us both. Kev yells at Joan to look at the screen, but by the time her eyes manage to leave the pages, the story has passed.

Another annoying thing about Joan is that when she does watch a murder mystery with me, she has worked out the plot and the guilty before I understand what is going on. She claims it is because she reads hundreds of books a year...many of them murder mysteries. A mate reckons it is because I'm as thick as a brick.

Talking about murders; who would live in the quaint little English village from Midsomer Murders where five or six murders are the order of the day? Be bloody cold in the winter too!

Bibra Lake for me.

Home Gym

I have always been good at mechanical things: cars, washing machines etc, so I thought that assembling my new home gym would be a piece of cake. I was surprised at the quality of the thing. Chinese manufacturing took far less time to get up to quality than the early Japanese efforts. 'Jap Crap' it was called. Now it is rare to get a Japanese product actually made in Japan. Retail outlets advertise made in Japan on products as a selling point.

Any way, back to my home gym assembly. I found it reasonably simple to assemble the main frame, but when it came time to fit the three cables and about 9 pulleys I could not follow the instructions with the minute illustrations. Tomorrow I will take a digital camera to the jock shop where I bought it and get pics from all angles. Another great reason to have a digital camera.

Time to exercise

I mentioned before that I bought a new bicycle with the intention of getting fit. Today I saw an advert in the Quokka for a secondhand gym and my brother Graham and I went to look at it. It was outside in the rain and had been for some time. They will have a problem trying to give that one away.

On to the professional jocks' store where we found a nice new gym machine discounted to $299. It is in several boxes in our store room awaiting assembly tomorrow. I hope it has instructions for assembly better than most Chinese manufactured stuff.

I read in our daily paper that a study has shown that suggests that with exercise, older people can restore muscle and bulk as easily as young people. I shall report back on that one.

Maggies

I thought I had discouraged the maggies' visitations, but this afternoon we had a gathering of friends in our alfresco area and despite the very noisy talkfest, the seven maggies swooped in for what they thought was their feeding time. They didn't understand that I wanted them to go away when I ran at them like a demented screaming 67 year old...which I am. They just resettled at a distance wondering why they were being ignored after five weeks of feeding four times a day.

I admit to being a bit silly by feeding them in the first place but they should:

1. Realise that they shouldn't shit on their benefactors' chairs, table and brick paving area..
2. Understand that if they are not going to be friendly enough to sit on my hand, to bugger off.
3. Understand that I am an grumpy old man .

Enough said.

Decision time

Yesterday I made the decision to discourage the seven maggies that fly into our alfresco area at least four times a day. They mess over the out-door furniture and the brick paving which gets a bit hard to clean. I guess if they eat, they s___.

It was almost as if I had painted a warning sign for them: not one visit yesterday and none this morning so far. As well as deciding not to offer any food, I have a hose with a jet trigger ready to give them a bit of 'shock and awe'.

Bali again

Today our Indonesian teacher rang telling me of the situation at the school in Bali where we installed some computers. Not good news. It seems that of the 14 machines we installed only 3 are being used and only for games. Minor problems stymie the staff as they have no experience with computers and cannot read English to get help from the 'Help' function of the operating system.

We have offered to return to Bali and get them operating again, but it seems as though they want/need to have a tech. visit once a month to keep them running. We are being looked at to finance a technical person to travel the three hours to the school. It would be almost a full day's work. We can, I suppose, afford it, but I am loathe to commit us to such an arrangement for how long we don't know.

Hindsight is good. We should have realised that it was not a sensible project at the start.

The 'Justice' system

Here in Western Australia we have a parliament and a justice system based on the British model. Should be pretty good! It is pretty good too....that is: pretty good for the criminals. There a few chaps here who seem to be able to shoot people, sell drugs, bash people and somehow not even be charged, let alone convicted. These blokes are all mates and are Perth's own mafia. Troy Mercanti shot an asian gang member in a night club with an unlicenced pistol and several of his mates helped get rid of the gun (on camera). A couple of our local footy heroes were involved in a minor way. Troy boy was slashed by the asian gang member before shooting the slasher. No one was charged.

Troy has just given himself up to the police over an unprovoked nightclub bashing. He is also facing court over a previous nightclub bashing. I have taught a few kids named Troy and somehow none of them were very nice.

I bet if I were caught taking a leak in an alley, I wouldn't be let off.

Unfit Kev

We drove up to City Beach to collect a couple of donated computers today. As I mentioned recently, computer models change so quickly and the current prices are getting lower and lower. It is in one way sad that great machines of five years of age are deemed to be obsolete and are upgraded. Been guilty of doing that myself quite a few times. They work perfectly and would be ideal for a retiree writing his/her memoirs. These two are most likely going to Bali when we next travel there.

I offered to help a friend with some minor repairs on his boat and today rode my new bicycle to his house which is about 1.5 kilometres from our place. The route has a minor hilly gradient and I arrived out of breath. After the little job, the ride back let me know that I am seriously unfit. I will have to think about some sort of exercise regime...maybe join a health club. Yeah!

We had some good news from the Indonesian lady who is helping with our enquiries about the computer installation at Catur School in Bali. She has been able to get the home and mobile phone numbers of the Principal and will ring him in the next few days to ascertain the real situation before we travel up there.

Books

I have just finished reading a book I purchased on eBay. 'Kiki: Ten Thousand Years In A Lifetime’

Albert Maori Kiki (1931–93) was of the Elema people in the Gulf of Papua. I first heard of him from a staff member at the primary school I was in charge of in Arehava village. I was ‘warned’ to be careful because Maori Kiki was the cousin of one of my staff. That teacher was very difficult to work with and I knew that much of his translation of my talks at village meetings was coloured with Kiki’s problems with Australian administration officers.

Reading his book, I can see that he was a very talented man who suffered a great deal of discrimination at the hands of Europeans (whites). I have always thought that we (Australians) did a wonderful job of bringing Papua New Guinea to Independence in 1975, but as I progressed through the book I remembered many similar incidents with government officers and private enterprise people dealing with natives.

At least Independence came without any rebels in the hills.

The other book I have just finished is ‘There Where The Pepper Grows’ by Bem Le Hunte.
This fictional tale is based on fact and tells the story of one Jewish family who escaped Poland and finished up living in Calcutta, India for the duration of WW2.
3/5.

Computers will rule the world

I had occasion to attach a PC keyboard to one of our Macs a couple of days ago. The Mac immediately informed me that it didn't recognise the keyboard and gave me some instructions with which I could help it understand what was plugged into the USB port.

It told me to press the inboard key of the left hand shift key and then press the inboard key of the right hand shift key. It then told me that I had attached a PC keyboard and that it had configured it for use with this Mac. Smart!

Many years ago I saw the first glimmers of artificial intelligence when a spell check remembered and 'learnt' a new word. Google tells you what it thinks you meant to type in the search box when you do a typo and the Altzheimers aid; the autofill feature on forms is very smart. I am constantly amazed at these machines. What will they be like in 20 years time?

Friday

Bought a new bicycle yesterday and assembled it in about an hour. It is made in China but branded Repco. Aluminium sprung frame with twist-grip gear change and wait for it...disk brakes! It is a very nice piece of equipment for the measly sum of $189.

A friend loaned me his exercise bike so that my lucky legs (lucky they don’t break off) would get a bit of exercise. It never happened! So I will return the exercise bike to its place, the storage shed at my friend’s place and attempt to use my new treadly to get a bit of condition in the leg muscles before we do any walking in our upcoming visit to the U.S.

I have been gradually cleaning out my workshop and getting rid of lots of tired computers I have accumulated since we started the overseas assistance projects. Cables that used to cost a fortune are now worth nothing. Same, of course, goes for computers. Something that cost $2000 four years ago is now a give-away. Just today I was donated an iMac for one of our projects. It is still a great machine, but worth about $50 these days; that is if you can find someone who wants to buy it.

I searched around for a recycling yard to take all the computers and found one. Trouble is they will only take the CPU and not the monitor. The boss at the yard informed me that they are shipped off to China where people on very low wages strip them for the metal inside and even the gold connectors in circuits. So, the monitors went to the landfill site. I was a bit embarassed throwing them out of my trailer into landfill, but there is not much else to do with them.

Flotsam and jetson of computer collecting.

How do cables and hoses get into knots all by themselves?

Feeling better . .

When I went this morning to have the thumb wound looked at by the surgeon I asked why I had been so ill yesterday when I had felt fine on Tuesday afternoon and evening after the op.

Apparently, ill effects from the sedative should have happened Tuesday. What had I done on Wednesday morning? Taken Panadeine Forte when I got up. Twenty minutes later I was a mess.

So now I have another painkiller to be careful of. I already knew that I cannot take morphine orally. Now it seems that I also react to codeine, though it may be OK taken after a meal. I don't think I will experiment for a while.

The thumb is fine. I cannot bend it but I can rotate it freely. It hasn't been at all painful, except if bumped. I am quite skilled at not using it; in fact I think I am just recalling manipulation techniques I acquired back in 1993 when my hands were badly burned.

There is only a small dressing on it now. Very little to show for an operation that cost over $1000 with only $400 refundable through Medicare and HBF. The hospital and anaesthetist costs were fully covered though.

TV Quiz show

am a bit of a fan of the Channel 9 programme: Temptation. Good hosts, interesting questions and contestants. There are two ‘models’, a male and a female who are not too shabby either. The male model gets lots of other work and is found in many of the junk mail brochures that stuff our letter box every day. He looks very much like the football star Ben Cousins. The female model looks like every good looking young lady.

At the end of each episode of Temptation the winner and the hosts do a bit of handshaking and animated talking and the models move down from their last post on the set to also congratulate the winner. I notice that if the winner is a physically attractive person, both models will give them either a warm handshake and a peck on the cheek; however, if the night’s winner is not of the beautiful bod set, they tend to get at best a handshake. I don’t think I would rate too well there, either in the quiz or the congrats department.

Joan felt ill this morning after her small operation yesterday. She went back to bed for five hours and thought that she was over it, but once again she felt nauseous and chucked up. The neurolept anaesthetic: conscious sedation, was probably the villain here. Let's hope it settles down.

Bits and pieces

I dispatched a translated email message to a teacher in Bali this morning. I had my message translated by an Indonesian lady who works at Castlereagh School in Willetton. I wrote (in English) a simple greeting and then got down to business asking 5 questions regarding the computers we had dispatched to the school in the mountains.

The Indonesian lady, Pingkan, rang me at home and suggested that the letter I had drafted was not the way it was done in Indonesian. She sought my permission to add some polite niceties and chit chat before getting down to business. I, of course, agreed and her version was a lesson in cultural discourse.

Joan had a day procedure at a large private hospital today to remove a cyst growing near her thumb nail. It was a local anaesthetic procedure and she was out after half an hour of chop and rip. After the Medicare and Hospital Benefit fund rebate we have to come up with $600.
Australia has a great medicare system and wonderful hospitals, but I wonder how long public patients would wait on the free list for this little non life-threatening operation.

As we get closer to the trip to the US in July, I must get my International Drivers Licence from the RAC. I will also get information on the procedure to follow if we have a traffic accident.

The Monster Chorus

Kevin remarked a while ago that he might be creating a monster by feeding our visiting maggies. I think he has.

I was home alone this afternoon when they came to call. Just a few notes to let us know they were there. I ignored them. Then the phone rang and after I answered that, I went to look at our other call. Six maggies, five of them sitting on the outdoor setting chairs, and all of them staring hard at the kitchen window. They could obviously see me moving inside. I went and did something else and the calls increased in volume.

I think they gave me perhaps half an hour of warbling. It isn't hard to listen to, but it was VERY loud. Eventually they gave up.

It is a pity that they also leave their calling cards on the chairs.

Kingfish

There is a nice fish shop in the suburb of O’Connor and it is always a pleasure to be served by a little Italian lady. Yesterday I bought some Kingfish.

It cooked up nicely and we had another piece left over to make a ceviche dish. We usually use mackerel for ceviche, but because the Kingfish was only $15 a kilo, thought it would be worthwhile to try Kingfish. The fish needs to be sliced thinly so that the lemon juice can ‘cook’ the fish and that is when I found the parasitic worms. They are not dangerous to humans.....but I wouldn’t eat a peach if it contained fruit-fly larvae.



I took the piece of fish back to the shop this morning and told them about it, showing the worms. Although I genuinely did not want cash back or more fish I was given a couple of pieces of snapper. Yum.

We used to buy fish caught in Lake Argyle; Silver Cobbler, a type of catfish. It was very nice but we also found the same worms in some of that flesh. Haven’t seen them in fish markets for years although Lake Argyle is teeming with them. Maybe the worms put people off.

Early Morning Alarms and Excursions

Martin rang at 7.20 this morning. He was late for work and had run out of petrol just round the corner from our place. Kevin got a can and went to his aid.

Couldn't find him, so came back and tried to ring his mobile. Mobile engaged. So Kevin decided to try again. Martin rang - where was he? Kevin found him, not in the place he had said, at this moment. Phew!

But then I heard our car come back. No funnel, so that was the next excursion. Everyone highly stressed by this time. Finally got Martin on his way, we had breakfast, and I took off for the workshop I was teaching. The car was well warmed up.

Dave next door came over this evening to return some cables he had borrowed. They had been a bit concerned about all the to- and fro-ing, wondering if there had been a serious incident. I wonder how many others in the cul de sac noted the coming and goings.

A very busy day

Late yesterday I received a parcel from my sister who lives in Esperance on the south coast. It contained photos from her family album that she wanted scanned, cleaned up and burnt to a CD to send to the US in preparation for her son's wedding there in July. That out of the way, I posted the CD off to her and then returned home and completed the small jobs on the Castlereagh computers I had brought home. I then set up a couple of them for the school computer gal, Sin Bee.

Sin Bee had been thinking about the problems I was having getting information from Bali about the computers we consigned to Catur School and when I arrived at Castlereagh School, she introduced me to a very nice Indonesian lady teaching at the school, named Pingkan. Pingkan has suggested that I find out the Head Teacher's mobile number and she will talk to him direct to determine whether Joan and I should go to Bali to finally get the computers working. Now all I have to do is get some help from The Fawcett Foundation in getting the Head Teacher's mobile number.

We have our cars serviced by a local mechanic and he and I have had long conversations about his disabled daughter. The daughter is eight and cannot talk. She has been withdrawn from school because of difficulties with other children. I went directly from Castlereagh to the mechanic's workshop to talk him into visiting Castlereagh and looking at the excellent work being done there with children like his. He is keen, but his wife, who is doing a teaching degree in special needs education does not want to admit that their daughter needs this sort of care and education. I think I have convinced him, but he is sure his wife will persevere with home schooling. The Castlereagh administration is keen to admit their daughter. It will be a pity if this opportunity is not taken up.

Castlereagh School

Today I drove out to Castlereagh School to collect some computers which needed a bit of a tickle up to get them back on the job. Castlereagh is a government school for physically and mentally disabled kids; some severely. The school is very well appointed with a dedicated staff.

One would think that it could be a minding centre for harried parents and no doubt it does sometimes fulfill that function, but I never cease to be amazed at the full-on efforts of administration and staff to provide an appropriate education to their students. That education is tailored to the ability of groups of kids. Some of the more able students will end a year being able to do simple PowerPoint presentations and use an email client, whilst the achievement of others may be gauged by the ability to feed themselves.

To visit Castlereagh can, at first, be daunting and even depressing. There are loud screams and flailing body movements, but in all this there is a very positive atmosphere. I don't think I could work there.

Sin Bee is my main contact there as she is the lady who oversees all the computer activities as well as having a full teaching load. She is a well liked and skilled staff member.

Fawcett Foundation; Grrrr

I mentioned the difficulty we were having getting information from the John Fawcett Foundation in Bali about the computer installation at Catur School.

Through the auspices of the Foundation, two consignments of computers were included in shipping containers to Bali. The Foundation held a meeting in Perth a couple of weeks ago and I gatecrashed it to get first-hand information of what has happened to the second consignment. I left a note with my questions and yesterday received an email reply. It seems that John Fawcett considers the installation to be my project and can offer very little assistance either with information or time. The Foundation in Bali has the Head Teacher's mobile phone details and the ability to talk to him in Bahasa Indonesia, but that seems too difficult.

The Foundation did, however, see fit to publicise the first installation on their web page as 'computers installed by volunteers' under the heading of Education Assistance. Bah!

Now, information about me. My GP has put me on to a new arthritis tablet named Prexige. It has given me much relief.

Eucalyptus Lehmanii

Kevin contacted the Agriculture Department regarding this scrubby bush that has been intriguing us for months and got an an official identification. It is apparently quite common, but we have not found any other specimens during our walks.

Today we spent quite a bit of time examining and photographing the stages of its flowering cycle. We were lucky - the whole cycle was present.

Formation of flower buds.


Ripe buds.


Partial flower.

Full flower.

Flower's end.

Seedpod.

We probably should also have taken a photo of the dried up seedpods that were still on the bush, but we didn't.

Weekend footy

My team had a good result in this weekend's round of AFL footy. As mentioned before, I am a parochial Western Australia and as long as one of our two teams wins I am happy. This weekend it was the Eagles. The Fremantle Dockers lost by a heap of points. The Freo Dockers has been lumbered by this stupid name Dockers. It is supposed to show that they are from the harbour port. In fact the wharf labourers have never been called dockers. They were and still are, called wharfies; although there aren't too many left thanks to containerisation of cargo. I guess this is just like a host of other Americanisms creeping into our language. Cookies indeed!

I have been to only one real footy game in my life and that was in around 1950 when I was taken by my grandfather who was down in Fremantle from the farm. It was a memorable day, mainly because he treated me to fish and chips at half time. For a long time I looked at football on TV and thought that it looked like a helicopter had dropped hundreds of dollar coins on to the playing field and players were fighting and groping after them. I am warming to the game in my twilight years, but still don't know the rules well or even the names of most of the other teams in the national league. That said, I do think it has a lot more going for it than soccer and gridiron.

Many of the followers attending matches seem more concerned about getting their mugs in front of a TV camera than the game.

PC = Problem Computer

I have a computer sewing machine which uses software that only runs on Windows. Therefore I also have a laptop running WindowsXP and my embroidery software. This laptop is not connected to the internet - I can usually download any embroidery designs I want on the Mac and transfer it via thumb drive to the PC. If I can't, I don't want it.

I decided to upgrade the embroidery software, so I needed an internet connection to register it. I have had the laptop since 2004 and have connected it to the internet perhaps 3 times. I have never had a problem before, but today there was one problem after another. As I was loading the new software upgrade I kept getting popup messages that told me with increasing urgency that there were major errors in my system and that I needed to download a repair program. I ignored the messages till I had loaded and registered my software, then downloaded the repair program. It was a very businesslike site - no misspelled words, so I thought it was fine. The instructions said Install, Run, Restart. I installed and tried to run it. Nothing. I tried to uninstall - couldn't. I tried to update my sewing machine, couldn't. I tried to run a CD, couldn't quit it. AAARGH!! Even a close down didn't solve it.

Kevin was sick of my grumbles so he rang Rob. Rob likes Macs better than PCs, but he knows Microsoft backwards and is our first port of call with computer problems. He listened to my description of the strange happenings and decided he needed to look at it.

It took 4 hours, 3 downloads of various antivirus programs and a lot of waiting for the programs to search and destroy before the problem was fixed. I couldn't believe what these antivirus programs showed. Four times connected to the internet, each time only to upgrade a software program, but there were 4 worms (each contained within the automatic Windows updates) and 233 pieces of malware.

If I didn't need to connect occasionally I would never do it. Rob has made me promise that whenever I do I will update and run the antivirus checks. And NEVER download a repair program again!

I still can't update the sewing machine itself. I just wish I could do it on the Mac.

Turtle Tortoise

This morning we walked around North Lake and just off the track found the shell of a long neck tortoise. The crows had done a pretty good job of removing most of the flesh and what was left was just right for our daughter Helen's primary school class. When we got home I washed it thoroughly and had a closer inspection of it....amazing stuff.

The top part of the shell, the carapace, is joined to the bottom part, the plastron. The spine is fused to the inside of the carapace and there are what look like ribs radiating out from the spine. At the rear there is a pelvis on which ball joints for the rear legs are visible. At the front is another very human touch with twin scapula. I'm with Mr Darwin!

The second photo shows the spine fused to the carapace and the pelvic girdle.

Gathering some information for Helen I found out that turtles and tortoises are very similar; turtles mainly living in the sea or fresh waters. The tortoise lives a fair bit of its life on land.
They, both of the order testudines, are the only reptiles with shells.

More Maggies

Kevin was woken up this morning by a magpie chorus. Me - I slept through it. He fed them and they went off to scrounge from someone else.

Later in the morning I was sitting at the kitchen table when there was a tap on the window. A maggie of course, sitting on the lintel. I called Kevin, but by the time he had prepared some food the maggie was gone, and he/she hadn't brought the family.

We have both been out most of the afternoon, so we don't know if they fronted up for another feed. I do hope we haven't created a monster.

creating a monster

A couple of weeks ago I started feeding a single Magpie some scraps. Now we have about ten 'friends' who visit about three times a day. The have become so bold that they fly into our BBQ area onto the chairs and glass topped table . If I don't jump up immediately and start cutting up some food they start up a very loud chortling chorus. If they see me through the kitchen window they wait patiently until I bring out their tucker. At first only the adult birds ate from my hand but now even the grey, young birds are getting tamer and will soon eat from my hand also.

Friends have a couple of dogs and when they want to go away a kennel has to be found and paid for. I am sure these blokes have a circuit and fly off to the next meal after they are fed here. Won't have to worry about them when we go overseas.






The entertaining part about the maggies' visit is that they swoop in and try to land on a glass-top outdoor table.

Best type of pets!

Confessions of a mechanical incompetent

I am free motion quilting a piece for the QuiltWest exhibition at the end of May. I have been using the older of my two machines because I've had it longer and know most of its tricks and quirks.

I broke the darning foot this morning when it got caught up with a safety pin I was trying to open and remove. Damn and blast! I now remember that I broke another darning foot before, doing the same thing. Not wanting to take a trip to Willetton to replace it, I found a stippling foot. Does the same job, but has a different method of attachment.

Couldn't remember how to attach it, so I had to look it up. My frustration mounted steadily.

I had to remove the ankle (technical term for the bit you usually just clip various feet on to) in order to screw on the stippling foot. I tried, but I couldn't get the foot into the right position for the screw. Back to the reference material.

It said I also had to replace the screw that holds in the needle with another one. OK, found the new screw, replaced the needle, still couldn't attach the foot. Grrr!!

Then I looked at the illustration and my machine. I found that there was another screw at the back of the needle bar that I needed to remove.

Righty tighty, lefty loosey - I need these aids to memory. But the screw was facing away from me, so it took several attempts to actually remove it. Then the new foot fitted perfectly and I was able to sew again. The whole thing took at least 45 minutes.

Kevin says this is a very boring post. I say it helps mental health to vent, not to mention financial health, since I was ready to throw the machine out the window.

Whining about wine

This evening we sat down to watch the ABC programme (see, I still spell the old difficult way) Talking Heads where the head was Stephanie Alexander. I f you don't know who she is, use Google with Australia selected.

The show was most interesting and we broached a second bottle of Wolf Blass Eaglehawk bubbly.

Bugger - it was corked! Not so much that we couldn't finish it, but enough to sour our enthusiasm for Australian wines and their glut-induced cheap prices. You may or not know that we do imbibe the odd bottle of Aus. bubbly? We do.

Damn it, we estimate that one in ten bottles of Australian bubbly (can't call it Champagne these days) is either corked or lacking bubbles. They must be cranking it out by the thousands daily and I guess there should be some crook ones. A mate of mine has gone over to the terribly crass screw-tops and tells me that he hasn't has a dud in years. At least with corks you have the semblance of class even if the odd bottle is dead.

You can take a dud bottle back to the bottle shop without any hassle, but it is so cheap that we end up either putting up with the taste or pouring it down the sink.

One trick we employ when we try a suspect bubbly is to say that it is very similar to a French Champagne we tried when touring France....and we did try quite a few.

Rain, rain - don't go away!

The autumn gales have started and very welcome they are. Not so much the wind, but the accompanying rain is wonderful.

After the rain a few days ago the local gardens all look much brighter. Roses in particular have responded very well. Our neighbour only has white Iceberg roses and they are covered in blooms. Even our own roses, tended as they are by a brown thumb (me), are flowering well.

We walked at Manning Park this morning. Because the sky looked threatening, I took an umbrella along and that action worked its usual magic. It didn't rain while we were walking.

Manning Lake is filling gradually, though it is still mostly dry. We find it interesting to note how the water levels are changing every few days. Today we decided to go and look at the small lake in Market Garden Swamp in Munster, just down the street from our previous house. We parked the car and walked to look at the lake. No lake, just mud.

On the way we saw a big congregation of water birds - at least 2 different species, plus a couple of pink and grey galahs all happily pecking at the grass together. Then a couple of magpies arrived and the group broke up in alarm.

We were alarmed too - the skies were about to open. Since I had not brought the umbrella along to ward off this downpour, we scurried back to the car, reaching it just in time.

Showers have continued all day and the forecast is for more of the same for the next week. I hope the Weather Bureau is right, and that the rain keeps coming. Bibra Lake is no better as yet, nor is North Lake. I think it will take many rainy days to improve their situations.

Bichon Frise

Bichon Frise sounds a little like a French BBQ. Our friends, Margaret and Haddon have a BF and another dog of similar size and colour. Joan found a book on Bichons yesterday at the antique and collectables fair at Claremont showgrounds. I dropped it off to their house when I went to help Haddon bring his yacht/boat home from its mooring in the Swan River.

I was reminded why I had sold my boat recently....maintenance, maintenance and more maintenance! As well as maintenance we found that every time we went out on the water, there was some problem. I am not into problems these days.

He found that the mooring chain had corroded to the thickness of a bit of fencing wire. The winching up of the boat onto the trailer was done by Mark their son. Just as well, we are both due for a bit of youthful assistance. He will spend the winter with grandsons fixing and painting the boat. Both the grandsons are very good value. Sometimes I feel that we would like grandkids, but not too often.

Our son Martin's new job sounds too good to be true. A reasonable salary,a company vehicle and a mobile phone. Damn, I would have liked that job! One opportunity came my way from a friend who owns a very successful computer business. He is branching out into digital aids for elderly people and has suggested that I might be of value to him in this new enterprise. I don't know how this would work, but we are going to talk over lunch next week. Hope that is a business lunch...I have never had one of those.

Code Breakers

I take medications for blood pressure and cholesterol. My GP (he isn't exclusively mine) is trying to control my cholesterol with a couple of drugs. One is Lipitor and the other is Jezil (gemfibrozil). Jezil is to control the cholesterol usually attributed to alcohol consumption. OK, I admit to imbibing the odd drop.

The GP upped my Lipitor from 10mg per day to 20mg per day and I am due for another blood test this coming week to see if the extra dose is working.

The test is a fasting one and it seems that early morning tests are an unhappy time with lots of people with rumbling stomachs. I will front up on Monday morning at a collection centre and sit without social interaction with fellow travelers in the waiting room of Dracula. Nobody talks in these situations. . . . .'Have you got cancer' is not a topic we should explore.

The people I most admire are the nurses at pathology clinics and specialist centres who can interpret the illegible scribble that doctors learn at medical school. They should be employed as cryptologists by ASIO to decipher terrorist documents.

Indomethacin

I have recently been revisited by a long-time companion: arthritis.

I first met the big A in the seventies and after being referred to a rheumatologist started on the trail of deciding which medication was going to help. I started out with asprin, then brufen, voltaren and every known non-steroidal medication, radio-therapy and steroid injections. After about three years of extreme pain he moved me on to the heavy stuff and a course of gold injections did the job.

Now it has returned and lodged in my left knee. Gold is out of the question as is methotrexate because of the possibility of liver damage and so I have gone back to Indocid (Indomethacin). Indocid really works well, but has nasty side effects with me. If I take it as directed...two, three times a day after meals, I get whacked out and feel like I am having a very bad hangover. So, I take it only after the evening meal and it sort of works and I come good around 9.30am.

It's not a biggy: several friends have far more debilitating health problems.

Our son Martin has just returned from a job interview where he was successful and starts tomorrow. This job comes with the use of a vehicle and so we can sell his current bomb and save us money in licence and fuel. We hope that he can make this job work.

Helen's computer

Helen visited yesterday after school and enjoyed, as we did, a lamb roast. She mentioned (as kids do) that her printer was not working and that she was unable to play short videos sent to her attached to email messages.....Kev decided to go to her house and take a look at the problems.

Easy! Her Mac iBook didn't have Windows Media Player installed to play some of those mpegs. One of the mpegs she wanted to play was a .wma file titled 'The Fremantle Dockers will win the Premiership'. It shows the heading and then a baby laughing so much the he/she falls over. Cute.
I downloaded WMP and installed it....fixed. The printer had a number of jobs queued and was having a bit of a hissy fit about all that work backing up. Solution: delete the queue and start again.

We have quite a few printers and I have refilled ink cartridges for years....I've got the coloured fingers to prove it! Canon printers with separate ink tanks were the easiest to refill. Recently Canon followed the other printer manufacturers and chipped their ink tanks to stop people like Kev cheating them out of their primary income, ink cartridge sales. I use bulk inks to refill my Canon i560 printer and they work really well....but; as soon as the print head goes on that printer I will have to buy professionally refilled ink carts for our next printer. Bastards!

Term Two - Day One

We have both been retired from teaching for more than six years, so it shouldn't really matter to us that school started again this morning.

The Teachers' Union is threatening industrial action if all classrooms are not fully staffed. The Education Department says that there will be a teacher in every classroom , even if some of them are relief teachers. Oh, yeah - posturing on both sides.

The schools that are short staffed will be in the country with little incentive for any one to fill the vacancies. They have poor housing, few facilities and usually a local mindset that regards teachers as transients, somewhat akin to gypsies, rogues and vagabonds.

In the past teachers were forced to accept such postings.

Kevin spent a year in one such town. He was forcibly posted there, despite numerous life factors that should have prevented it. His father was dying, our son was in his last year of High School and dabbling in drugs, plus I was in a promotional position. Thus his family could not accompany him to the town, and every Friday he drove to Perth to have some semblance of family life for the weekend.

Of course this bolstered the locals' attitude that teachers didn't become part of the town. I am still angry about the whole situation, even though it was nearly 20 years ago.

Conspiracy theories

After the murders at Virginia Tech no doubt there will be a number of conspiracy theories suggesting things like a staged mass shooting by the gun control lobby.

Conspiracy theories abound….J F Kennedy, 9/11 and Port Arthur to name just three.

I am unsure whether the people who concoct these theories actually believe what they say and write or if they are just planting the seeds of doubt into the minds of the gullible.

If you Google 9/11 conspiracy theories, for example, you will get a result of…
Results 1 - 10 of about 1,410,000 for conspiracy 9/11.

More than 3000 books on 9/11 have been published; many of them reject the official consensus that hijackers associated with Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda flew passenger planes into U.S. landmarks.


On Port Arthur: Google Results 1 - 10 of about 605,000 for Port Arthur conspiracy. Here is the
Wikipedia link.


JFK conspiracy theories have been around for a very long time and Google results show 1 - 10 of about 1,090,000 for JFK conspiracy.

I get very angry at people who promote conspiracy theories. I recall a teacher colleague who taught Social Studies regurgitating the holocaust deniers’ diatribe that there was really no concrete evidence that it occurred. That made me feel sick.

Maggies Again

When we went walking at Manning Park this morning Kevin, as usual, carried a plastic bag for picking up rubbish. This caused great excitement amongst the resident magpies who gathered around us, hoping for largesse. We disappointed two groups of them. We also collected a full bag of litter.

As we neared the carpark we had started from, we encountered a lady with a plastic bag. She admitted that she was the maggie feeder and we told her that she was eagerly awaited. I was tempted to backtrack and watch feeding time.

The maggies who were visiting our backyard have obviously found a better feeding ground since we haven't seen them for about a week.

Reunion and Bali progress

Every year Laurel, who was my teacher in Standard 2 and is still extremely sprightly though now in her eighties, organises a reunion for women who once lived in Wongan Hills. Her assistant organiser is Judy, who was my best friend in primary school.

The reunion has been going for 10 years or so, but my sister and I didn't find out about it till 3 years ago. This is the third one I have been to. Our cousin Sylvia came too.

Dorothy and I left Wongan in 1954, so we don't remember a lot of the people who go to the reunion, but it is good to catch up with those we do know. This year there were more of them than usual. Two of them were Judy's sister and mother. Judy's mother is 93, but is very alert and though a little unsteady on her feet, quite robust. It was a very pleasant gathering.

Kevin dropped me off in Perth and went to a meeting of the Fawcett Foundation. It appears that we may be able to make a little progress in regard to the computers that he sent to Bali over a year ago. He has been promised information about where they actually are and about the power situation at the school. Once we have that we will make a quick trip and set them up. We have been promised assistance with transport and an interpreter. The school is about an hour from Kintamani in a very poor area and the teachers do not speak English, so an interpreter is essential.

We hope that this will work out. It has been very frustrating not knowing what was happening after all the work in collecting and packing them.

Parental Dependence

Our son Martin falls into the category of parental dependence. Yesterday his visit to CentreLink to get back on the dole was stymied by the fact that he didn't produce a birth certificate. We thought this was a little strange as he has been a frequent benefactor of the welfare system. CentreLink told him that the system had changed and they needed to view his birth certificate.
Martin has a filing system for his documents akin to a rubbish bin. He couldn't find the birth certificate, so he visited us (to use our phone) to try and get a new extract. Problem!!

Martin was born in pre-independent Papua New Guinea and after searching local and national records there seemed to be no Martin Lock registered. As Papua New Guinea was a United Nations Trust Territory, Martin was not automatically an Australian citizen. Going on leave from PNG in 1973 we were all required to get a re-entry permit to return to PNG after annual leave and we had to declare Martin an Australian citizen. I believe we could have made him a citizen of any one of the countries in the U.N. but we chose Aus.

Soooo, to get an extract of his birth certificate I contacted the Papua New Guinea Consulate in Queensland only to be told that I should apply to the Papua New Guinea Births and Deaths Registrar in Port Moresby. I rang them and was told that for K22 (about A$ 10) I could get an extract posted to us. Pretty cheap as an Australian Birth Certificate costs $40! Trouble is that they will only accept a bank cheque in PNG Currency, the Kina and the Combank wants $20 to draw the cheque.

Martin was searching his trunk of junk for the original and found it....in 12 pieces. He took it down to CentreLink and they then told him that they didn't really need to see his birth certificate. Well bugger me! Today's little exercise cost a lot of dollars.

We still don't know if there is any evidence that he is an Australian citizen.

The Judicial System

I am regularly surprised when I read the daily paper and a case is in the news of some event that took place two or three years ago. It does recycle news and rekindle interest in that case. Every now and then I think 'whatever happened to that axe murderer who chopped up his mother-in-law and made her into pies for the school fete?' And there he pops up in the paper, now on trial and we read through all the statements and remember the initial charges.

Not so in China, the world's best executioner. The time between arrest, trial and execution in capital crimes is relatively short. And I would think there is not too much publicity about the trial or execution. Organs are harvested from Chinese prisoners when executed, and for a fee I can go to a specialist hospital and receive a kidney from an axe murderer. I have read that prisoners are prepped and blood tested for the harvesting of organs before their executions. In some cases money for the organs is given to family.

There is a lot of death about this week with another mass shooting at an American University.
We have had video and graphic reporting on the shooting and I think it will be going on for many days yet. Joan is concerned that the mass murdering going on daily in Iraq doesn't get very much publicity, compared to the amount of media space devoted to this occurrence, yet in all cases the victims are equally innocent.

We have had some nice rainfall over the last few days and the Maggies have not visited since then. I figure that they are finding enough earth worms coming to the surface after the rains.

Rebecca Bauman

Today James (a colleague from Willetton SHS) and myself, met up with Becky at the Subiaco Hotel for a reunion. James was Year Master for the time Bec was at our school and I had the privilege of teaching her photography. What a gal!

She was very diplomatic saying that I hadn't changed in the eight years since I had seen her last. Liar, liar!

She has changed. She is now a sophisticated young lady, world travelled and independent.
In school she had a lip stud, and now she has no such accoutrements...not even a hidden tattoo.

She is an artist graduate and has been instrumental in organising the Festival of Perth and has been employed by art galleries. That business is not given to full employment in 'Dullsville' Western Australia. She is considering moving to Kennett Country, Victoria, where there are more job opportunities.

I have kept in contact with many of my ex students from Willetton SHS but Bec stands out as an outstanding young lady.

Hope we keep in touch.

Bali woes

I mentioned previously about a project at a school in Bali where we have set up a number of computers, desks and chairs. We also sponsor a lad in that school. The school is in a very poor area of Bali near the Kintimani volcano. Over the few years we have been sponsoring the lad, we have never received a reply to letters and gifts we have sent. We can manage a letter in Bahasa Indonesia with the help of a Malay teacher we know and have said that we would like to hear news of his progress. Nothing.

I have also dispatched another shipment of computers and peripherals and paid to get them transported up to the school and set up by a local teacher. That shipment was about 18 months ago and we have not heard whether they even got to the school, so I decided to put a bit of pressure on the John Fawcett Foundation to find out ...a. whether the lad is actually getting our letters and presents and, b. what has transpired with the second shipment of computers.

Today I had a call from the local contact for the Foundation and he informed me the the lad and the Head Teacher are not much interested in writing to us and the computers have not been installed because they could not find a MacIntosh technician. All they had to do was plug them in and press the start button.

John Fawcett is in Perth for a meeting of the Foundation and I am going to the meeting on Friday to find out what exactly is the problem. We have decided to go to Bali soon to sort out this long running problem and will be looking for assistance from John Fawcett with an interpreter and transport up to the school.

The Footy

Yesterday afternoon my brother Graham rolled up at 5pm with his sleeping kit to watch the western derby between the Eagles and the Fremantle Dockers, and that we did in the company of a few bottles of Victoria Bitter Classic.

Graham is an Eagles fan and in true believer form does a bit of yelling at the opposition and any umpire who gives a decision against his team. Lots of one-eyed fans yell at their TV screen. His team won the match. There are nice guys and rough-heads in both the Dockers and the Eagles. I reckon the coach sorts out who gets to be good player/bad player. There was a fair bit of biffo in the first quarter as usual then it went on to be a good game of footy. Graham cannot understand how I can be a parochial Western Australian and follow both teams. I get to be satisfied with the outcome no matter who wins the derby.

This morning we; Graham, Joan and Kev went for a walk around North Lake. Graham does a pretty good imitation of John Howard and rocketed off at a Prime Ministerial pace. Just as well, because with a little headache, I was not in any condition for polite conversation.

Late again

Most of yesterday was spent with our son Martin swapping parts from a second unlicenced car to his licenced bomb: doors, seats, tyres, engine bonnet,interior carpet and lights. His bomb is still dripping oil and blowing a bit of smoke out the rear. The other car I bought for $80 has an excellent engine and I should remove it and install it in Martin's car, but I have lost the energy to go through the whole operation. Yesterday's little exercise was good for both of us. We have not made a cooperative effort together for a number of years. It was good for our relationship and good for me in as much as I was lacking a good project to keep me busy. Of recent weeks the most taxing task for me was trying to unwrap the daily newspaper from its cling-wrap.

We wont keep the car body when we have salvaged all the good parts. I will advertise the other spares for a couple of weeks and then sell the body. Scrap metal merchants pay around $35 for anything on wheels and they come and collect it. Not bad! All in all, that $80 has given Martin three good tyres and a load of good panels and interior.

If our neighborhood wasn't a bit upmarket, this wrecking business could be a good source of tax free cash.

Maggies

The Australian Magpie is a very common bird and a group (?) of them have suddenly dropped in on us for food. It is quite flattering that these birds deign to honour us with their presence. I firstly fed them some scraps of cooked meat and they picked it over eventually eating it all, so I thought I would go and buy a dog salami. It isn't really a Salami, or as the Americans call it, a Bolony. It looks good enough to slice up for a stir-fry, but the maggies don't fancy it all that much so I dumped that in the landfill bin and sliced up a small amount of the pork fillet which is/was for this evening's stirfry. The maggies loved it and a couple were so keen that they were eating out of my hands.

Maggies can get a bit mean around breeding time and many people are 'swooped' by a maggie as they pass by a nest. They are like an exocet missile, (you remember the Falklands war) very silent until they hit your head with a sharp beak. People in the know wear a hat and wave their hands around to discourage these attackers when passing tall gum trees.

When I was a kid, there was a friend whose family had raised a maggie by hand and it was a frightening watch-bird; much like a nasty rooster.

I expect that I will be reminded to attend feeding by beaks tapping on the glass door to our BBQ area.

Collecting Bottles

Every time we have driven out onto Phoenix Road in the past few days we have seen a bottle lying on the verge. It was the same one, but at least no others had been added. We never stopped to pick it up though, because the intersection has quite a volume of traffic and there was usually someone right behind us.

This morning we got up fairly late and we needed to do a short walk because of other appointments, so we decided to walk down to the intersection and pick up the bottle. We saw a council worker slashing grass at the park, and when we turned towards Phoenix Road we saw another, mounted on a lawn mower, just crossing the road to the verge where the bottle lay.

He started mowing, then got off the mower and picked up the bottle. Foiled! we thought. But he just tossed it into the shrubbery and continued mowing. Kevin went and picked it up and a couple of others as well and we returned home.

Now we are wondering why the council doesn't supply each mower with a bag. If the operator is going to get off the mower to remove bottles from his path he could just as easily toss them into a collection bag as into the nearest shrubbery.

Australian Army Museum

I mentioned an eBay purchase I made of a commemorative booklet named 'Moresby Mice'. When I received it by post I was quite disappointed and decided to donate it to the West Australian Army Museum in Fremantle. Whilst it is not a wonderful booklet, it should be kept for posterity.

Today I went down to the museum which is housed in an army barracks near the harbour. The museum has a number of tanks and scout cars on display in the parade ground ....quite impressive although slightly tatty. I fronted up to hand over Moresby Mice and was ushered into an office where a chap wrote down details of the booklet and I signed one of those museum documents relinquishing all rights of ownership etc etc. I was familiar with that document as I had donated some other WW2 stuff before.

I have thought of donating my grandfather's Boer War medals and discharge papers but they are still something that should stay with family, although there are fewer of us left these days.

I intended looking over the exhibits, but there was still one hour to opening so I returned home. I looked the museum up on the internet and the exhibitions looked a bit ordinary with dummies dressed in uniforms and a bit of equipment in the background. I'll check it out later.

My uncle, who retired from the W.A. Police Force as a superintendent in January 1976 left us his badges of rank and the Queen's Police medal and various pieces of uniform paraphernalia. I recently decided that the Police Museum should have this impressive collection and the curator was most grateful. I shall arrange a time to deliver it to them.

Easter Sunday Barbecue

It's all over - everyone has left, and we have washed up the glasses and dishes. Funny how few entertaining china and glassware items actually fit in the dishwasher.

We got up a little late this morning so we didn't go for a walk. Instead I spent four hours in food preparation. I had planned a Greek style Easter feast. First I removed all the fat and boned the leg of lamb, made slits and inserted garlic and rosemary and prepared a marinade for it and sat it in the fridge. Then I made two dips: homemade hommus and an olive and walnut tapenade to be eaten with Turkish bread. I peeled potatoes and marinated them in a lemon and herb dressing, then prepared a dressing for the cauliflower and beans which were to be the side dish. Kevin helped by juicing lemons - I needed about one and a half cups for the various dishes. We cooked the lamb and potatoes in the barbecue.

I love having the things that I need growing in the garden. Today we harvested lemons, parsley and rosemary. I noticed the mint is doing well and I will use some of that soon.

I catered for eight, but we were only five. There is not a lot left over though. I am really tired, but I have less than 5000 steps on the pedometer.

Carters Little Liver Pills

Easter can be a bit taxing on the Bod. I was given a vial of Carters Little Liver tablets by a friend a couple of years ago and they may get used before Tuesday. Carters Little Liver Pills are not actually for Liver stress, but Headache, Biliousness and Constipation. This lot are also probably 40 years old....no use-by date on this little bottle!



Reminds me of all the snake oil medicines sold in health shops and even pharmacies. Take a look in your local pharmacy; tabs for Mr Atlas type muscle growth, nerve tonics, 200 arthritis cures and a plethora of tonics touted by well-known sporting and media personalities.
Who needs snake oil?

Pharmacies don’t sell the shark cartilage cure for cancer. You have to go to a private address where a very genuine fellow will tell you how the medicos are trying to stop him saving lives. He will sell you a cure for around $500.00.

Then there are the liniments that don’t actually tell you they are NOT made from goanna oil or the Balm that is NOT actually made from Tigers.

In my seemingly long life, I have seen all sorts of cures for ailments ranging from ingrown toenails to cancer. I have seen primitive people believe in the most simple trickery performed by a sorcerer.

It seems that even in this age of universal education, educated people are still willing to give anything a try.

A Domino effect

The pinball machine that was languishing in the storeroom has made the move into the house. It has been repaired, and the gaudy paint job touched up.

To make room for it in the study we had to move out a cupboard in which Kevin's cameras were stored. That was moved first into the dining room, but it didn't look good, so we decided to move it into the hallway. It looks fine there. This move involved a bit of rearrangement of art works as well.

We had to move the second computer desk against the window in the study, so we can no longer use the cupboards in the back. That meant all the old Edison cylinders needed another home. While we were moving things we moved the Edison player itself to another position in the dining room. We also moved the antique tea trolley which was by the front door into the dining room and we like the look much better. The Edison cylinders can now go into the tea trolley cabinet. Then we will have to move something else to take its place near the door . . .

PBY Catalina

During the week there was an article in the 'West' about a recent acquisition at the Aviation Heritage Museum in Bull Creek. I went to the museum today to take a look at that wonderful aircraft, a Catalina PBY. PBY stands for Patrol Bomber and the 'Y' is Consolidated Aircraft's Manufacture Identification.




The plane was rescued from the side of a road in Texas, restored and shipped to W.A. in a number of containers by the U.S. Navy. Volunteers assembled it inside the museum hangar. It is kitted out as a wartime aircraft with machine guns front, sides and under the tail.

The Aviation Heritage Museum has a massive amount of stuff on display and much documentation about aircraft both military and civilian and the people who flew them.

I remember the Catalina fondly as I had a number of flights in them when I taught in the Gulf of Papua. In the early 60s there were no airstrips in most of coastal Papua and TAA operated two or three of them to outstations. I recall one trip to Port Moresby on the 'Cat' with around 20 passengers and their luggage. The 'Cat' made a ten minute run out to sea before bouncing off a wave and gradually climbing to height. They were very noisy as there was no sound insulation and the two huge radial engines were virtually only half a propellor's distance from the passengers. The co-pilot informed passengers of features below by passing a card message board back and once read it was passed to the next passenger. The same method was used on bare-bone DC3s.

This Photo is of the TAA 'Cat' in Kerema Bay awaiting passengers arriving by barge in 1963.

Better late than never

Yesterday I fell for the glossy brochure/cheap price offering from Harvey Norman. I bought their advertised 5 Megapixel Kodak digital camera for $99. It looked good and I thought it should do as well as Joan's 4 Mp Canon camera....not so! The lens is probably made out of rejects from a contact lens factory in the Peoples' Republic as the on screen results look like a pic from a mobile phone or a security camera.

We have a drawer for such purchases. Much like the cupboard with the ice cream maker and the food dehydrator.

On our walk this morning we did the beach around Woodman's Point and on the north side of the point saw a dolphin and her baby about 3 metres from the water's edge in very shallow water. Who needs Monkey Mia?

Beatles line: Will you still need me when I'm 64?

We don't need to worry about that anymore - today I turned 65. If I were still working I would retire. I did have a super policy that matured today - I organised its rollover a couple of weeks ago, so we will have a slightly higher income now. I can't imagine why I thought I would continue working to age 65 when I took it out 26 years ago.

So what did I do on this important birthday?

We went for a walk this morning as usual, but instead of going home we had breakfast at the Coogee Beach cafe - pancake stack with berries. Yummy, but neither of us could finish it. I don't think we will get into the habit of breakfasting out.

I had an appointment in West Perth with a plastic surgeon this afternoon. The referral was made more than 6 weeks ago and I accepted the date because the alternative was an appointment in June!! Please don't get excited - I am not having a face lift or a boob job, though either or both might be a good idea. Instead I am having a small operation on my left thumb to remove a cyst that sticks out and has damaged the nail bed.

The appointment was at 1.45 pm. My sister had invited us to afternoon drinks and a barbecue to start about 3pm. The surgeon sent me to have an Xray at the practice just behind his offices. We were given directions that involved quite a long walk - not a problem, I welcome any opportunity to add to the daily tally. An hour and a half later I returned to the surgeon's, clutching the films.

In the meantime Kevin had had to feed the parking meter two or three times and had discovered at least three different routes from surgeon to Xray place, all much shorter than the way we originally took. It's a shame that we are unlikely to ever put this local knowledge to use again.

I rang Dorothy at 4pm to apologise for the delay. We finally got to their house about 5pm, having coped with afternoon traffic on the Mitchell Freeway (I have often heard on the radio that freeway traffic north is moving well except near Lake Monger, and we experienced this today - still don't know why though) and parking at Carine Glades shopping centre. Why Carine Glades? I will explain on the other blog.

We had a great meal at Dorothy and Mick's. Lots of lovely bubbly for the birthday girl ... Kevin was abstemious so he could drive. All in all I have had a very happy birthday.

Betacord still going

We still have a number of bits of movie viewing technology, starting with a super 8 film projector, a Betacord VCR, a couple of VHS VCRs and a DVD players in each computer and attached to our plasma TV.

A spare room houses the Beta tapes and the VCR and occasionally I slink off into that room to watch a movie from my nice collection. Then it happened...the Betacord cacked itself and started chewing up tapes. I dismantled it and found that although it played OK as soon as the tape was supposed to return to the cassette it wrapped itself around all sorts of bits inside there.

What to do??? I have a second Beta VCR of the same model for spare parts and could have found someone to fix it, but the costs are about $100 for a tame technician to do that job. Kev bought a Quokka (a weekly advertising paper) which is free for advertisers and $2.50 for buyers to purchase. There it was for $100...Toshiba Betacord with remote and 80 movies, including five head cleaning tapes. I raced out to Maddington and grabbed it. It works really well and I am gradually going through the tapes and dumping older tapes that will soon give my machine trouble.

Not one XXX movie in the lot!

I am thinking that I will buy a gizmo which allows me to digitalise them and burn the best of my tapes to DVD. I guess by the time I get around to that, DVDs will have gone the way Betacord went.