razor blades

The technology used to make razor blades is quite old. I started shaving with 'Blue Gillette' blades. My father thought you could sharpen them by pressing them on the inside of a drinking glass and rotating the glass using water as a lubricant....nah!

I have graduated to using Gillette Mach3 blades. Four blades are more expensive than a 1Gb flash drive and last only a few shaves. What a great business! Mind you, I shave in the shower and the times I have tried cheaper blades it ends up like a scene from Psycho with blood swirling down the drain and me looking like the 'the little Aussie bleeder', Norman Gunston, with bits of tissue stuck on wounds.
Even when we have travelled overseas to countries noted for their cheap gear, Gillette blades are much the same price as at home. If the Chinese can copy the iPhone, why can't they make half-price Gillette Mach3 razor blades?

5.30am

It is 5.30am and I have been up since 4.30. Kev and Joan carefully calculated the time needed to get sister Shirl to the airport for her 7.30 flight back to Esperance. Joan set the alarm on her phone, but as usual I spent the night worrying whether it would actually go off on time and in this state I had in my mind that the time to arise was 4.30am. Most of the night was spent checking the time at hourly intervals and at 4.30 I got up and woke Shirley. Now we have been sitting around for an hour waiting for the correct departure time. I have this problem every time we are traveling.
Shirley's burns were treated and assessed at RPH Burns Unit and when back in Esperance will do a tele-conference with RPH from Esperance Hospital so that the progress of the healing can be monitored and a decision about skin grafts made. Her house is going to need major repairs to the kitchen and general cleaning and repainting to smoke affected areas.

Burns

This morning my niece from Esperance down south rang to tell us that my sister had had an accident and been burnt on the arm. She was deep frying and was called to the door when a neighbor's child came to borrow something. By the time Shirl had dealt with the child, the deep fryer was ablaze. She tossed it into the sink; it splashed back and burnt her arm badly. She put the fire out and called an ambulance and was cared for at Esperance Hospital. The head honcho there determined that she would probably need skin grafts and booked her into the Burns Unit and Royal Perth Hospital. He reasoned that there was no sense trying to treat her in Esperance when Perth has Australia's premium burns unit. The hospital paid her airfare and we collected her at the airport. Her appointment is at 9am so we will have to plan carefully to get there on time in peak traffic conditions.

Joan spent five weeks in the RPH Burns Unit some years ago. She had a number of grafts and the superficial burns on her face actually smoothed out a few wrinkles.
Here is a pic of her on the second day in the unit. I took a daily photograph of her and presented 10X8s of the whole healing process so that others would see that all is not lost.

Cedar cladding

Friends, Dennis and Carole live in Fremantle in their lovely two storey house. It has Cedar planking as weatherboards and need painting with very expensive preservative every couple of years. They usually build a makeshift scaffold and Carole the fearless goes up high to do the painting. This time Den went and bought a stack of steel piping in preparation for the scaffolding and it was on the verge outside their house on a trailer. Den loves the engineering of such constructions, but as it turned out a fellow was passing, saw the pipe and knocked on the door to try and buy it. He was told what it was for and he offered the free use of a mobile cherry-picker if Den would sell him the pipe. I dropped in to see how it was going and was surprised to see Carole up on high, operating this rather complex machinery without even a tremble....looked like a tradesperson! The job was done in no time with minimum fuss. The cherry picker is on a diesel truck and reaches about 40-50' and has a rotating bucket. The safety features are high tech. Sensors shut off the machine if it is too near something or nearing the point of over-balancing. The truck speaks loudly in Japanese warning people when backing up.

Hear, hearers and Dorothy Dixers

Politicians around election times kiss babies and visit workers in factories etc and always use the opportunity to announce a bit of pork barreling or slag off the opposition. Inevitably there are two or three of the party faithfulls behind the man and they nod approvingly, tut tut appropriately or smile widely when the opponent is slagged off. Both the PM and Mr Rudd do it and it is as transparent as the Dorothy Dix questions in Parliament. The member for such and such an electorate asks a question of the Speaker along the lines of...'Mr Speaker, I address my question to the Minister for Silly Walks. How is it that since coming to office, the government has been able to overwhelmingly improve the silliness of Australia's walkers?' Of course the member posing the question must be a member of the government for the DD to work. The Minister for Silly Walks is then able to waste plenty of Parliamentary time explaining his success.

Run rabbit, run

I went to Bibra Lake again last evening to try and photograph the rabbits we had seen previously. There were only two of them playing in the grass. They look pretty nice and allowed me to get quite close before hopping into tall grass. When I was younger; much younger, rabbits lived in burrows and I wondered if these city dwellers still dug burrows? It seems they do also live in bushland when sufficient cover is afforded them. The story of rabbits in Western Australia is covered in this nice presentation; well worth a read. Yum,rabbit stew.

Pests?

We have had a few days of insect infestation….thousands of small hovering ‘flies’ with yellow stripes on their backs. A friend thought that they were native stingless bees and they do look similar to the pics of the many variety of native bees. They are about the size of a small house fly and hover. This morning I rang the W.A. Ag. Dept and was told that they are Hover Flies and the whole metropolitan area is infested with them. Fortunately they are not like ordinary flies; they don’t bite, get on your BBQ snaggers or try and get up your nose for a drink. It seems that they are beneficial, pollinating flowers and fruit. I am, however, glad that they have moved on.

On the subject of flies, we have had a good run this last year…..very few flies as a result of the very dry conditions. Now, however, the flies have had a good season and are back in force. On our walk today near Bibra Lake we were almost choked by swarms of midges. Also near the lake in an open area we saw a family of six rabbits. They looked like they were having fun playing in the mowed grass. I will return today at dusk with a long lens on my SLR and try and get a few shots of them. Rabbits have had a bad press. They were here in plague proportions and I remember netting them around dams in the fifties on my grandparents’ farm in the wheatbelt. The Bibra Lake rabbits are unlikely to do much damage as there are no crops for them to destroy and if they ventured out of the parkland I am sure pussy cats and Rottweilers would soon eat them up…or in the case of the latter…tear them apart.

There is a mature fig tree in the parkland at Bibra Lake and it is laden with fruit. We have never been lucky enough to taste them as they suddenly disappear as they ripen. I guess it must be the council employees who cut the grass inside the park who do daily checks as the fruit ripen.

A Cockup

Over the last few days I have been eagerly awaiting a flood of letters of protest to the newspapers about the Director of Public Prosecutions here in W.A. Nothing! Zilch!

Mr Cock, an unfortunate surname if ever there was one, decided not to prosecute a Member of Parliament John Quigley, even after Mr Quigley admitted that he had made threats to an undercover policeman involved in the trial of one Andrew Mallard.
Quigley is also a solicitor and represented Mr Mallard in his trial review.
Mr Cock has,I believe,made a big Cockup by not charging Mr Quigley because of his public profile. I doubt whether Mr Cock would be as kind to me if I were in the same situation.
Mr Quigley is a high profile solicitor who worked hard to overturn the murder conviction of Mr Mallard, who is now free after 12 years in the big house.

Melville markets

This morning we decided to get out and visit 'swapmeet' at the Melville Plaza car park. It is a big event with probably 150 sellers. It has a good variety of goods,even some antiques, most of them showing off their little yappy dogs.
We bought a couple of plants and Joan bought a nice old carving knife.
Some of the hundreds of buyers are regulars and two of them we recognise have probably been to every swapmeet since it started about 15 years ago. One of these two we call 'Bang' because he lets loose with a very loud yell 'Bang' at passing cars. The other fellow we call the vacuum man because he has a fixation with buying vacuum cleaners. Even though he cannot speak too well he knows his vacuums and carefully inspects every part before making a purchase. He has no preference...upright, barrel, he likes them all. He lives in care in Fremantle and after making his purchase crosses the road to a bus shelter to catch the 103 to Freo. While he waits for the bus he strips the vacuum down and reassembles it and just before the bus arrives smashes it on the side of the bus shelter and carefully puts all the bits in a nearby bin.
He will spend no more than $10 on his purchase and gets very angry if the seller will not lower the price.

Heathcote

Today was a lovely warm sunny day. I went with some friends (actually we are all committee members of Designing Women and we had a meeting) to Heathcote. We met at the cafe there.

Heathcote is such a beautiful spot - perched high above the Swan River with views to the city and almost to Fremantle. Today the river was crowded with yachts and because the Red Bull air races were on, the sky was almost as full of planes.

There was a wonderful textile art exhibition at the gallery. There were lots of families enjoying the playground and picnic facilities. The restaurant was the venue for a wedding reception - we didn't see the wedding party, but we were treated to the view of numerous very well dressed guests. Everyone on site seemed to be happy.

Heathcote was once a dreaded destination. It was a hospital for patients with psychiatric problems - mostly women. When I was a child, when some one was "sent to Heathcote" it was a shameful thing, talked about in whispers. Today it is recognised that most of the patients were probably suffering depression; in many cases, post natal depression.

Provision of facilities for the treatment of mental illness is presently a political football in this state, and there is no doubt much more needs to be done. But the "good old days" were far from good, and Heathcote is more beneficial now to the mental health of its visitors than it ever was in the past.

Guru and junior Guru

OK, I confess; I couldn't fix our daughter's iBook. I managed to get a great deal on a similar model for $325. I removed the Hard Drive from her now dead iBook and bought a cheap USB enclosure so that we could access her work. I managed to find a few of her bits of work, but couldn't see all her settings for her email client etc etc. Go to the Guru.

Rob is my Mac Guru. I am a junior Guru: a bit like an auto mechanic...can fix other people's cars, but not his own.

Rob is very good and after a couple of hours of transferring data, all Helen's settings, music and photos were on her new machine.

Rob is a bit like a tradesman..."who did this lousy job?' I have to endure a few gibes such as 'Kevin, what have you done here?' But in the end it all works out fine. I owe him a nice bottle of something for his efforts. I hope Helen realises the effort which goes into such work.

The chap I bought the laptop from pointed me in the direction of an free on-line data storage site named Mozy. The free storage is a max. of 2.5Gb which is enough for important files which could be lost if otherwise not backed up to CD etc. I will use it.

Junior Guru Kev helped out friends' daughter today by sorting out a few problems on her Mac. I was also able to show her a few tricks and shortcuts. She gave me a bottle of bubbly. How did she know that we drank alcohol??

Halloween Trick or Treat

Halloween has never been an Australian tradition, but it seems to be becoming an adopted fashion. Groups of kids roam the streets of suburbs such as ours, knocking on doors requesting "trick or treat". A handful of lollies (sweets) is the accepted response.

Last year we were embarrassed when we had nothing to offer the kids who knocked on our door. While Kevin wanted to give them cough lollies, I think we scrounged together some small change for their treat, so they were probably quite happy.

This year we decided we would be prepared, but we both forgot to buy the lollies. I went out with a friend today and when we returned to her house we saw a group of kids setting out on their trick or treating. So, on the way home I called into a supermarket and bought three bags of lollies (last year we had three groups ring our doorbell). I mixed them up and put them in a bowl near the front door.

I needn't have bothered. It is nearly 10 o'clock and we have had only one visitor - a teenage girl who nearly had a heart attack when Kevin opened the door and said "BOO!!" to her. She did take some lollies though.

more amateur tech stuff

I managed to get the laptop stripped down and when I tested the start button mentioned, found that that was not the problem after all. A bit about half the size of my little finger has been cooked. Luckily I am able to get a spare for, I think, free. The tec who is looking for the part has warned me to ensure that the screws (about two dozen of them) go back in the same places otherwise some screws may go in too far and cause a short and blow up the whole machine. I am pretty sure I know where most if not all the screws go. I do have a jar of left-over screws and bolts from other repair jobs.

It should be back working in a couple of days, but I won't fess up if I can't get it going. So there!

On Sunday we had a visit from Joan's sister and husband Mike. Mike's Parkinsons is still bad even though several attempts at regulating the medications have been made. He tried the electronic pump to no avail, so is back on hourly tablets. They have a possible/probable date at around three months for the big Deep Brain Stimulation operation.

Kev

amateur technician

A few days ago our daughter Helen got me to look at her laptop computer. The start button was playing up. I fiddled with it and thought I had fixed it but it was still dodgy and yesterday it failed and we couldn't start it at all. Following the first'fix' I went to a sale of Mac gear at Presbyterian Ladies College and bought a top case which included the start button. Last night I disassembled the laptop, carefully labelling every one of the dozens of
screws and when I went to replace the top case with the one I bought found that it was for a smaller iBook. Damn! I will go back to PLC today to see if they will exchange it for the correct one.

Although we are still coughing, today is the day we must attempt to get over it and start living normally. I am unsure if I am still infectious. Hate to give this lot to someone else. The woman we got this flu from in NZ is visiting us in a couple of weeks and she is still suffering. Maybe it is the 100 day flu as the NZ Air hostie said.

Looking for things to do . . .

We are both still under the weather and we have been wandering about the house at a loss for things to do that do not require much physical or intellectual effort.

This morning Kevin did an oil change on the Daewoo and I stitched out some embroidery designs. We spent a lot of time on the computer and I found a very interesting site which offers a donation of rice for correct definitions of English vocabulary. I spent quite a bit of time there.

In the afternoon we went down the hill to the vegetable market and stocked up on vegies. It is the season for broad beans and we bought a few. Kevin decided Sweet and Sour would be a good evening meal so we went to the butcher there and bought a piece of pork.

When we came home I cooked the broad beans and we had them as a snack with butter, salt and pepper. YUM! I hated broad beans as a kid, but I think this was because they were overcooked. Also, I firmly believe they must be eaten in season - frozen broad beans are horrible.

The sweet and sour pork was yummy. I used a recipe from an old Australian Women's Weekly Chinese cookbook. It needed some modification in respect of the amount of meat (2.5 kg of pork chops for 4-6 people?!?) and quantity of oil, but the result was great.

I may need to revisit some of my older cookbooks.

takin' it easy

I have been taking it easy over the last couple of days. We still have our colds/flu and the GP has given us another round of anti-biotics. I did have time to help a friend set up his computer for Broadband connection to the internet. The ISP is AAPT and their package posted out included a modem and a CD to set up the connection. That was typical of the treatment meted out to Mac users: the CD was for Windows only and when I contacted AAPT they told me that if I just plugged the modem in it would automatically connect...BS!
After a bit of fiddling I rang again and talked another young man into talking me through a manual set-up. Five minutes later we were 'on'. All there was to do then was configure the mail programme and everything was 'running like a Buick'.

Our daughter Helen has been attending a two-day PD course at a local yacht club. This evening she rang to tell me that another teacher on the course was an ex-student of mine from Willetton SHS and fortunately he had only words of praise for Kev. Made my day!

On the mend

Today we are both feeling better. Last night we slept in the same bed and didn't disturb each other with coughing...I slept through Joan's coughing and I didn't cough.

Today I ventured out to try and buy a fruit tree to replace the nectarine which died some weeks ago. I visited several nurseries and hardware places and couldn't find something we liked with a fruit bearing time span within my use-by date.
At one place I was reading the label of a mango tree with a nice colour photo of the mango fruit and bugger me there was a fruit-fly trying to lay eggs on the photo. An optimist!

Later this evening I went to have an ale (or two) with my brother. We haven't seen each other for a few weeks because of our NZ trip. Graham is experiencing dizziness and his/our GP says his neck is out. I would like five bucks for all the times I have heard that. Graham has all the hallmarks of inner ear infection. I have had that affliction several times as has Joan and our daughter. Damned annoying in bed; when you roll over you get the spins just like when as a young fella you imbibed too much alcohol. There are drugs to help, but the problem eventually goes away. Our GP is a nice enough bloke, but he is all too happy to talk about his yacht or politics than take my blood pressure. I should move to a new GP, especially one who bulk-bills, but John has all my medical history and I don't want to start again with another GP.

unwell still

We both visited our GP on Friday. Joan's hearing problem was partially cured but I have to talk loudly for her to hear me. I can still mumble and swear without her knowing.

The Doc gave us different antibiotics and wants us to report back as to which one was more efficacious. If we were part of a medical trial I reckon it should have been free.
When I went to the pharmacist to fill the scripts I was informed that we had reached the threshold of the Medicare safety net and all the scripts were free. Up until then, as seniors, the scripts cost us something like $4.90 each. There are some benefits to getting old! I must try and get sick again before the year ends to get full benefit.

A few months ago I had the free flu shot. I have had them every year and not had a dose of the flu, so I have been trumpeting the use of the vaccine. I know there are a few breeds of this bug, but it certainly didn't help me this time.

We have been house-bound and not wishing to pass this bug on to any of our friends. Been trying to think of someone who deserves the flu...I could spread a little sunshine.

Home, sweet home

We arrived back in Perth at around 5.45pm yesterday Our daughter Helen collected us and whisked us home. The flight in Business Class on Air NZ was good as was the executive lounge with lots of food and drinks. Pity we couldn't really enjoy the treatment as we were both very sick with the dreaded NZ lurgy. One of the hostesses (now termed cabin crew) told us that it was called the 'hundred day cough'. Thanks for that. Joan has been partially deaf since landing in Auckland from Christchurch. I have to yell at her to get a message across. Bodes ill for the future. I have seen couples get very offside with each other over partial deafness:the no need to yell at me syndrome.
We slept in separate bedrooms so we wouldn't wake each other with coughing. The last couple of nights in Auckland were bad. We got hardly any sleep. I have booked us in to the GP tomorrow. He can't do much with a virus, but we'll give it a go.

Today is washing day....the handkerchiefs separated and steeped in Pine O Clean.

My plans to sit in the sun have been thwarted by NZ style cloud.

last day in NZ

Tomorrow we are flying out for an almost eight hour flight to Perth. Looking forward to getting home and sitting in the sun without a freezing gale blowing.

Today we took the Auckland Explorer @ $30 each. It does two routes and passengers can get off at stops of interest and reboard at specific times. We both had a horror night with coughing, headaches and runny noses, so didn't enjoy many of the sites. The Auckland Museum is an architect's dream and it houses, amongst other things, a vast collection of Pacific Island heritage items. Beautiful! We also visited MOTAT (the Museum of Transport and Technology) which was OK....6/10. Whilst we were there there were a couple of primary schools visiting. The museum is going to regret that visit. There was an exhibition on the evolution of computers and those knobs and switches got a good work out.

Auckland is the big smoke of NZ. 1.5 million people live here out of a total population of 4.28 million. That is not counting sheep. It may well be that our motel is in a different area, but there seem to be thousands of Chinese people here. Another thing we noticed as we walked out for a meal last night is that there is a lot of rubbish in the street and especially on escalators and stairs: cigarette butts everywhere. There are also large groups of Maori and Asian youth congregating even in the windy areas. They are doing the usual things young people do...leave rubbish, bottles and Macca wrappings around. The older I get the less democracy I wish to afford young people.

We walked out to try and buy a bottle of bubbly only to find that Auckland seems to have different laws/customs to the South Island and booze cannot be bought in grocery stores. We had to pay top dollar for wines or buy cheap Italian imports which we did.

Kev: on Joan's account

Auckland

We are in Auckland after a midday flight from Christchurch. We caught a cab from the airport @ $68. We won't be cabbing it back to the airport.

Christchurch is a lovely city with many heritage buildings. Our train trip to the west coast was great. The Alps didn't disappoint...plenty of snow on mountains, deep ravines and about a dozen tunnels....one 8.5 kilometres long. The destination, Greymouth was certainly grey. We had an hour there before returning to Christchurch. It was an all-day trip and well worth the fare.

Yesterday we visited the cultural precinct which includes the old Christchurch University (now an impressive arts centre) and the museum. The Christchurch museum was probably part of the old university as it has the same architecture. The museum is superb and I will suggest that the curator of the Perth Museum take a taxpayer funded trip to see how it is done.

New Zealand is the land of the hoody. In Aus, people wearing a hoody are probably considered to be villains. In NZ a hoody is required because of the freezing winds. Even farms have large pine tree hedges to try and break the wind.

NZ is a bit hard to work out. On the train trip the meals and drinks were very reasonable. I had a Thai curry and rice dish for $7.00. On the aircraft today everything was sold, even a biscuit cost $3.00. We were full-fare paying passengers???

Kev: Posted on Joan's account.

On the road again

Yesterday we left Blenheim on a dreary wet day to visit a few wineries before travelling to Kaikoura on the east coast. It was a good day to visit wineries and we went to three: Highfield, Wither Hills and Montana. We bought some wine at Wither Hills which is owned by Lion Nathan breweries. The wine was a bit costly until Mike, one of our group, pulled rank as an ex-executive of Lion Nathan and got us staff discount of about 30%. Good one, Mike! Wither Hills is a magnificent building and the underground cellars are enormous.

This is the second day at Kaikoura, a seaside town. Our motel is rated as the best motel in NZ and I can well believe that. Only thing it lacks is a wireless internet connection.
Kaikoura is between high snow capped mountains and a rugged coast. There are seal colonies along the beach and dolphin and whale watching all year round. Kaikoura was established as a whaling outpost in the 1840s.
We are travelling with a group of five others…Three from Queensland, two from the U.S. and us from Western Australia. We are getting along fine; all drinkers and non-smokers. That makes for a few laughs.

Tomorrow we head off to Christchurch, about 200 kilometres away. We have two days there, on one of which we board a cross-island train for a trip to Greymouth across the Alps. On the Monday the group divides and people fly to Auckland at different times. We will have a couple of days checking out Auckland before flying home to Perth…this time in Business class.

Real Estate weather

We have had two days of lovely weather whilst based in Blenheim 'New Zealand's Sunniest Town'. Blenheim is a nice tidy town almost city-sized. Our motel is the best we have stayed in anywhere. In the two days we have done a touristy drive around the edge of beautiful waterways and lunched in Picton. Joan and I even thought it would be good to live here. Then the long white cloud of NZ came in and the rain has settled in for what seems likely to be a long time. Today is day 3 of 8 of this tour and today I am driving the bus on a vineyard tour. It will be good for me staying completely alcohol free...until we get settled in our next motel. It will be interesting to compare motels. This one we are in has set the standard.

South Island

Yesterday I thought Bob was going to give me a rest day....no way! In the morning we went for a drive into the bush not far from his house to see something interesting. It turned out to be a Buddhist temple. Quite something in the middle of the bush!
In the evening he suggested that I might like to accompany him on a short walk. Didn’t sound too strenuous. We ended up climbing a small mountain. I felt reasonably good and we went for an Indian meal later that evening.
The next day we did nothing except washing and waited around until 2pm and he drove me to the Brisbane International Airport. The airport is quite new and nicely appointed. The Air NZ flight to Wellington was not the best I have experienced. The aircraft was fully booked with families and their crying kids. The meal was the worst I have had on a plane. The flight encountered a bit of turbulence and so tea and coffee was not served. We landed on time in Wellington after a flight of 2.55 hours in a violent thunderstorm. Cheers from the passengers announced the touchdown. I caught a cab to the hotel where Joan was. The cab driver was an African who was lamenting the NZ loss in the Rugby. Joan told me that the flag at the convention centre was flying at half-mast. This is Rugby town.





This morning we walked down to the docks in howling winds and driving rain to visit the National Museum, Te Papa. This Museum is really outstanding with changing exhibits. My only trouble was walking around, as Bob’s mountain climb had caught up with me. Legs and feet of Jelly! We are now on the inter-island ferry and although in high winds there is little rockin and rollin. A three hour trip will see us ashore at Picton where we collect the hire bus. I have been nominated as a driver..one of three. Hope I don’t have to drive near cliffs, snow or ice. Our first overnight is at Blenheim where we will spend two nights visiting vineyards and I suspect have a few samples.

I have a settings problem with the blog and cannot arrange my photos properly. Have to look at that when we have time.

This evening we are in a very nice motel in Blenheim, about 25k from Picton the port for the ferry from the north island. Had a good pub meal and tomorrow we are off to do a wine tour. This country has a lot going for it!

Brisbane

This is the second day in Queensland I am am being treated royally by Bob, a colleague from Forty-six years ago at Malaguna Teachers' College in Rabaul, New Guinea.
Yesterday we drove for about an hour to Currumbin Waters near the Gold Coast to have a most pleasant day with another colleague, Howard and his wife Ann. Their house in on over an acre of land sloping steeply down to a small lake...beautiful spot! We had plenty to talk about recalling the characters we studied with. Some great, humorous and scandalous stories there! Had a lovely lunch and too much wine before returning home.
Today we went in to Brisbane by bus and caught up with Tom another fellow from the college. Again, many stories which we should collect for a book of PNG experiences.

Not sure what Bob has for tomorrow...it might be a rest day.

I had New Zealand in my mind for this trip and neglected to pack a pair of shorts for the Brissie weather.It is 30+c at the moment.

I'm ready

Helen is coming down to our place to cook us a meal rather than taking me to her place. Good idea. She will drive me to the airport at about ten.

Joan has been phoning me daily on a magical $15 phone card that seems to be like the Magic Puddin and never runs out.

The conference/workshop she is at in NZ has daily sessions finishing at 4.30pm and the restaurant they all eat at is above a smart looking car museum which unfortunately closes at 4pm. The convener of the conference has approached the manager of the car museum asking that the museum be kept open for another hour so that the 50 or so women might visit @ $10 a head. He wants $100 to stay open as well as the entry fee. Is that dumb?

Google SketchUp

Google offers a free sketching program for both Windows and Mac. I have just had a little play with it to try and draw the Methane gas producer mentioned in yesterday's post. It doesn't really look much like the pig sty/methane producer I talked about, but it could, with a lot of imagination explain what I tried to describe yesterday. The individual pig pens were arranged around the circumference of the pen and daily the wastes were washed down into the fermenter.

I have started collecting all the gear I need for the trip to Queensland tomorrow night. Medicines, clothing (NZ South Island is cold and wet) and shoes. Helen, our daughter will collect me and make sure I have the tickets and passport etc, take me to her place for a meal and a couple of glasses of wine, then deposit me at the domestic terminal 2 hours ahead of departure. I am hoping to talk the airline staff into giving me a window seat so that I can rest my head on the window when I try and sleep. I have never been successful at sleeping on a plane, so this time I am taking a couple of Temazepam tabs. I'll either sleep or be hyper.

methane

I went to the Cockburn City landfill site today and took some pics of the new methane collection set-up being constructed. I am not sure how they will extract the gas or what it will be used for,but it is a huge area covered with heavy plastic with piping to collect the gas. It's hard to imagine how much gas can be produced by mattresses and such, but it is being done successfully at other landfill sites around Perth.

In the 1970s at a Vocational Centre near Port Moresby in Papua, I saw a methane producer working well and producing methane which was used to fuel the cook-house. The producer was a circular pig pen of about 15 metres diameter with a central circular pit into which the pig wastes were washed daily. The fermentation of the wastes and water gave off methane and that was trapped under a snug-fitting inverted cupola. A hose from on top of the cupola allowed the gas to be taken to the kitchen stoves. The pressure was regulated by weights around the edge of the cupola. I may try and sketch the system and post it at a later date.

Sadness

I have had two phone calls from Joan; one from Sydney Airport and one from Wellington Airport, and then an email message from Wellington confirming that the MacBook is accessing local networks to talk with me. I will suggest that she download Skype so that we can talk VOIP (google it).

I had a phone call this evening from Joy the wife of a long- time dear friend. She told me that John wanted to talk to me because he was a little confused. When he was on the phone he was most lucid and told me he was at the college (his previous workplace)and couldn't get out. He wanted my phone number to ring me in an emergency. He was at home and didn't associate his wife with his perceived situation.

John has a wide circle of friends who want to support him, however it is becoming obvious that very soon he must be put into care.

John has a condition called Lewy Body Disease which is akin to Altzheimers and is a major burden to his wife. What can we do to help?

Out of the box

We have had so much trouble with the WiFi setup on Joan's Presario laptop that we went out and bought an Apple MacBook. Everything worked fine straight out of the box. Beautiful! We will sell the PC laptop later.
I will be taking Joan out to the airport at about 10.30pm and she will be in Sydney at about 6am for a three hour wait for her plane to Wellington. Kev will have a similar flight next Wednesday night to Brisbane where I will be met at the airport and travel to catch up with friends from New Guinea days I last saw 46 years ago. Four days in Brissie and then I join Joan in Wellington and start the 8 day bus tour of the South Island. The weather seems bleak and pretty chilly. It is, after all, the land of the long white cloud.

countdown begins

Joan is packing her gear ready for her trip to NZ. She is leaving around midnight on Friday night. She hasn't actually packed my bag for my departure the following Thursday,but she has organised my travel documents etc. Eeek,I will be travelling alone! Who is going to look after me?

Our battle with the WiFi technology is ongoing. Joan has made many calls to Belkin via India without success and also talked with Hewlett Packard, who as it happens, make Compaq computers. None of the advice has helped, so this evening I will take it to a friend who is a PC Guru and if he can't sort it out,then to Willetton SHS Tech. people to configure and test on their network.

An escapee

I mentioned the ‘bring out your dead’ rubbish collection of last week. I got rid of a number of computers, printers and a heap of keyboards. The truck made a sickening crashing noise as it compressed all that technology. After it departed our street I went to see how much was left on the lawn…nothing. Only today as I went out to collect the newspaper did I see a small piece of plastic. It was a key from a keyboard….the escape key!

Our daughter Helen has just left for her school’s parents' night. She has a slide show of her pupils set up to run continuously and I printed off photos of the latest class project which is the construction of space craft as a follow-up on a unit about space and space flights. These kids are pre primary and have done some great work.

Last week I dropped into Willetton SHS to visit a couple of colleagues. It did seem that there was a lot of discontent and that teachers were not happy. I loved the place when I taught there and it is sad that the vibrant staff social life no longer exists. No staff parties, no progressive dinners (very 80s), no quiz nights etc etc. I have taught at a few high schools and they seem to go through a cycle of wonderful camaraderie and after a few years end up just a work site. Pity! When I was at Rockingham Senior High the staff fell in a heap as I have described and a few of us thought of ways to revitalise the social life of the staff. I came up with an idea to farewell a sheep ship from Fremantle harbour. After all, the sheep are Australians going overseas and almost certainly not returning. I could see it all…streamers; champers, formal dress on the wharf. Everyone thought is was a great idea and we thought we could invite Channel Nine along to film it.
When I rang the Port Authority I was told that the police would lock us up if we tried such a stunt. I guess we weren’t as brave as the Chasers….they would have gone ahead and done it.

Technology

We bought a WiFi card for my laptop on Saturday so I can take the machine to NZ and not suffer computer withdrawal. I installed it yesterday. Today I decided to test it.

I had checked the internet for free WiFi access points and discovered that the Dome cafe in Fremantle was one such hotspot. So today I dragged the laptop along when I went in to arrange travel insurance. I ordered a latte, booted up the computer and tried to connect. Local network appeared, I did everything I was supposed to do according to both the hard copy instructions and the onscreen directions, but I couldn't establish a connection. Gave up, drank the latte and came home.

I have tried again this evening. The card picked up a wireless network nearby (the next door neighbours I think. I didn't try to hack in!) Obviously the card is working. The Dome's network is shown as a profile that I could access if I were physically close enough. I don't know why I couldn't connect when I was. Tomorrow I will go back to where we bought the card, laptop in hand, and see if they can show me how to establish a connection that works.

I am not a technophobe, but I hate it when I follow all the directions and it doesn't work. It usually turns out to be a very simple step that was either overlooked by me or an assumption by the writers of the directions that everyone would know a particular point. I don't know which this will be.

Bibra Lake is a lake again

Earlier this year Bibra Lake near our home was totally dry. The doomsayers were all of a quiver. 'Climate change is here!' After the rains the lake is full and even the catchment dams are looking good. The water authority has said that there will be no need to impose further restrictions on our water usage. The lake looked good as we walked along the western edge. The bottle brush trees are in full bloom. For some strange reason the cockatoos cut the flowers off and drop them to the ground. Figure that one out?

We have purchased a WiFi card for Joan's laptop so that when we are in NZ we can tap into public networks to read mail and post to our blog. We haven't tested it yet and will probably go to a McDonalds restaurant tomorrow to see if it is working.

This afternoon we visited Joan's sister Dorothy and Mike, her husband. I have mentioned him before. He has severe dyskinesias as a result of Parkinson's disease. The surgeon will not tell them when the operation for deep brain stimulation is scheduled or even if it is scheduled, so they don't know whether it is to be this year, next year or never. I think I would be going to the radio shock-jocks or Channel 9 to get things moving. On the other hand it might well upset the man and he could be delayed past his use-by date.

TV and Bubbly

Yep, I'm a TV freak...only at night time. I watch 'my show'; Temptation and pit myself against the contestants. I fear that I am falling in love with one of the hosts, Lavinia Nixon. What a doll! Channel Nine is going to drop Temptation for another Eddie McGuire (?) show. He can't replace Lavinia! On the show tonight, one of the contestants won a Wengler watch which is waterproof to 1000 metres. I am quite sure my head would implode at 100 metres.
Another TV show I have flipped over to and really gets up my nose is 'Australia's Funniest Home Videos' presented by some blonde sheila and a lot of the vids are from the U.S.....not Aus. The programme almost always shows people damaging themselves seriously and the audience laughs themselves stupid at the unfortunate star who probably needs follow-up surgery and therapy.

Another show on TV here is New Zealand Highway Patrol. Well, if you ever thought our cops were a bit dumb, you should take a look at this show. Last night a car was pulled over and the driver didn't have a valid licence and his car was out of licence. He was given a hefty fine and told to drive straight home???? We are off to NZ in the next couple of weeks. I shall report back. NZ police have been in the spotlight for their very poor performance on a murder case this week. Methinks they couldn't find warts on a frog.

The bubbly part of this story is of a local discount deal on, dare I call it..Champagne. Hardy's Crest is on sale for $13.00 a bottle but two for one and if you buy 6 of them there is a further 20% off making it around $5.30 a bottle. Nice too!

Don't look a gift horse in the mouth

Yesterday I went to Castlereagh Special school to collect some of their discards. Two G3 Mac computers which were not working, six printers, a couple of boxes of new floppy disks and a mountain of new ink cartridges. The cartridges are worth at least $400....if one has a use for them! They are mainly for the printers that don't work and other brands I don't have. The floppies are no longer used. I guess that is why I got them?! I should be able to get a couple or three printers working with a bit of patience and the Macs are always able to be fixed with the spares I have available. Printers presenting with poor quality print usually indicate blocked nozzles and can usually be cleaned up with hot distilled water or isopropyl alcohol.

Why am I collecting old equipment? I hate seeing it go to landfill and I may get to send more gear to Bali. So there!

News from Papua New Guinea

In 1973, when returning to Australia on annual leave from PNG, we decided to take one of my students on the big trip to Aus. We had to make a pretense of randomly selecting one of the 65 Vocational School students. It was a bit tricky to make it appear that we drew the name out of a hat, when in fact we had already decided on a lad who spoke good English and we felt sure would fit in in Perth for the six weeks. The whole trip went very well and Michael learned lots of swear words when he spent a couple of days on a farm. We eventually returned to Australia permanently in 1975/6 and never heard from Michael again until I wrote him a letter a few years ago. He wrote back telling of his village life and his family. A short time later I received a very well written letter from one of his daughters. In the letter she gave me her banking details so that I could do a direct transfer of $2000 for her studies at Teachers' College. I must have been busy at the time because I never got round to sending the money.
Today I received another nice letter from one of Michael's sons asking for K5,000 (A$2,500) so that he can commence university studies in 2008.

It is not uncommon for teachers to be asked to finance education or businesses for their PNG ex- students' kids. I guess they see movies of seemingly affluent Australians and figure that we can afford to shell out.

ASOPA

ASOPA was the former Australian School of Pacific Administration and trained Teachers and Patrol Officers to serve in Australia's territories; mainly Papua New Guinea. Today I discovered that their newsletter mentions our family blog in quite glowing terms. The ASOPA site is also a very interesting read.

I had to visit Martin's workplace to get him to sign the vehicle licence transfer form for his new car. He didn't seem too good. Last week I filled some prescriptions for him and one was overdue. The pharmacist gave me an advance on that prescription, so today I attempted to get the GP to write a script for the already dispensed drugs. He wouldn't do it without a consultation. The GP doesn't work past 4pm and doesn't do weekend surgeries. I explained that Martin has just started a job and can't expect to take time off. Still no bending. I returned to the pharmacist and he told me that many GPs write a script and leave it at the desk for collection. He may have to go to another GP after hours and get a new script for the exact medication.

Kev gets lost

A couple of days ago I arranged to meet an ex-student of mine over a coffee. She suggested the Dome coffee place in Ardross. Seemed easy. I arrived early and waited and waited and she didn't show up. It was bucketing down and I thought she may have had an accident. After an hour I went home. On my mail was a note from her asking where I got to. It seems that the coffee shop I thought was the Dome was sold several years ago and she was about 100 metres away at the new Dome. She rang today to say that she would visit me at home in case I got lost again. We had lots to catch up on. What we both have done over the last ten years and news of other students in her cohort. She finished a science degree at RMIT in Melbourne majoring in photography so it was a bit of the student teaching the teacher when photography was mentioned. It is strange that most of what she learned is no longer valid. Wet photography has died and digital is supreme. She, Jayd, starts a new job with the Public Trustee on Monday and is constructing a website from which she hopes to establish a photography business as a sideline. I am a pleased that such a nice gal would wish to visit me.

Home alone

Joan has left me all alone. She has gone on a retreat for one of the sewing/quilting/fabric Arts groups. I confess I don't know which one. I do know that she took a lot of fabric dyes.
So, I am all alone...woo-hoo! Bring on the dancing girls! Just kiddin!

I paid for and collected, Martins car today. It has a few little quirks that need ironing out, but overall it is very good. I drove to Martin's work place to pick him up in the car and he found that he had been underpaid. He went back in to see the boss, but was told it was correct. Not good! He immediately fell into a dark mood and I could see depression written on his face. When I gave him the car keys he barely thanked me. About an hour later I rang his mobile to check on him and his boss had rung and apologised for underpaying him and all was well again. I even got a sincere thank you for the car. Whew! He also had a better day at work. Things will improve over the next week when he gets a handle on the computer programs and machinery at work.

A car at last

The bloke who was selling the Daihatsu Mira yesterday told me that he would have the car available for inspection at 9am this morning. (this was the fifth time we had arranged to view the car) I drove to his business (a car detailing yard with a horrible pit bull as a guard dog) but he didn't live up to his word. I returned an hour later and he was there...without the car. He rang his sister and told me that she would be down with the car and he would ring me. By 3pm we hadn't heard from him so I looked in the Quokka and we went and looked at a pretty nice Daewoo Cielo. Even though it has lots of kilometres on the clock it is in very good condition, so we bought it for $1100. Our Son Martin is well pleased.

Martin is under the hammer at his new job. He needs to be very proficient using Corel Draw and operating sign cutting machinery. He didn't claim that he had experience with such equipment and reckons that he will need a couple of weeks to get up to speed. His boss has him on lower wages for a few weeks, but is still pushing him hard. Hope he doesn't toss it in.

Fame

Update: Car hasn't been found yet. My new Betacord VCR is playing up.

I am going to give up chasing the guy who is selling the car. It is so frustrating to hear that I can see it and then some excuse is made why it will have to be tomorrow.
Fortunately my eBay purchase of a Betacord VCR was made locally and I can take it back for repairs. The fellow I bought it from is a reasonable chap and we have many interests in common...vintage cars, beer brewing etc. He has already agreed to service it thoroughly.

Yesterday our daughter Helen told us of a rather nasty event with a good outcome. It seems that some ex-students of her primary school (now in Year 8) made a home movie of vandalism to schools and cars at a shopping centre and posted it on You Tube. It was a good quality flik and everyone was recognisable by staff at the primary school. They even put their names on a list of credits at the end of the clip. Police have rounded them up. Ah, the price of fame!

Phantom car

I have been on the trail of a small car for our son...a Daihatsu Mira, which is like a shoe box on wheels. Trouble is the bloke who is selling the thing can't seem to get his act together to let me see it. It has been almost a week now since I replied to his advertisement and several dates/times have come and gone without me actually setting eyes on it. Maybe tomorrow.

Our son Martin started his new job today and he actually likes it. It is up his alley with computer graphics producing plastic badges and signs. If I don't find him a car I will be driving him to and from work every day. If I do find him a car I will be paying for fuel every day. That's easier than driving him!

It is this suburb's 'bring out your dead' collection and I have a nice big heap of what looks like good computer gear etc etc on our front lawn. Actually there is nothing good there. One of our neighbors has added to the heap with a few bits from a drier. This afternoon Joan walked further down the cul-de-sac to check out a nice looking bookshelf, but alas it had been ravaged by termites.

Yippee!

I have been bidding for a Betacord Stereo VCR on eBay and won it. Strangely they end up costing about three times as much as a brand new VHS VCR...there is a Luddite demand for them! I ended up winning it with a bid of $350. and as it is local there are no shipping charges.
Sounds like a lot of money, but I have a nice collection of movies and personal tapes I will convert to DVD. Also I spent more than that last night in tickets and booze for my kids to go to the Steely Dan concert....so there! We all rationalise on such purchases.

Our son Martin starts a new job tomorrow. That doesn't mean that we don't have to keep shelling out cash for some time. He won't be paid for a couple of weeks and there is rent, a car to buy (paid for by us), food and ongoing expenses including the money he has borrowed from a few mates over the last couple of weeks. Not sure we would have kids if we had a re-run.

The Concert

We were lucky that none of the rain that drenched the southern suburbs reached the Swan Valley for the Steely Dan Concert. It was very cold though...especially for me the skipper. On the skipper thing; don't be a skipper. Being sober whilst the others are intoxicated is no fun, in fact it can be very frustrating and unrewarding keeping your friends and family in line in a public place.

We decided to go early to get a good position. Sandalford Vineyard now specialises in concerts and good for them too....all the wines were exclusively Sandalford and the lowest price was $22. Beer was $8 a stubbie. They must have sold truckloads of bottles to the estimated 5 - 6000 concert goers. Entry into the vineyard was easy with lots of marshals guiding cars to a paddock parking area. Once parked we joined a queue of what looked like 2,000 plus people in a long line waiting for the gates to open. After probably 45 minutes the line started to move and eventually we reached the gates where our gear was searched for bring-in alcohol, metal cutlery, glassware and umbrellas. Once in, we positioned ourselves in the 'high chair' area and rugged up to wait for the two support bands to start.

The two bands were Gangajang and World Party. Gangajang did their well known stuff and world party from the UK did theirs. When Steely Dan came on with their ten piece band the mob went wild. It was a great show with many of their older and newer numbers performed. It was amazing to see and hear Walter Becker and Donald Fagan looking and sounding like they have over several decades. And they played their stuff exactly as the audience wanted it. I have been to concerts where the artists tell the audience that they are tired of the same old sound and are going to play it a bit different. Bah!

The concert was great, but getting out of Sandalford was horrific. It took about 45 minutes and it looked like there was a police road block at the entrance back on to West Swan Road. Being sober, I wanted to run the gauntlet, but we had the opportunity to go the opposite direction and join Roe Highway for a straight through trip home. It was a quiet trip home for a number of reasons. I think that will be my last concert.

Weather concerns and the Steely Dan concert

Kevin will probably comment on this tomorrow. I didn't go, but Kevin, Helen, Martin and Graham did. It is being held in the open air at Sandalford Winery in the Swan Valley.

We watched the skies anxiously this morning. The forecast was for showers clearing, and that seemed to be happening. However, our preparations included rain ponchos for everyone, as well as folding chairs, rugs and a picnic basket.

The event was due to start at 4pm. It had been dry and sunny for a couple of hours by then. The main event was to start at 7.30. It poured here just after 7. Sandalford is miles away in a NEasterly direction, and maybe the rain didn't get there. I hoped they had played safe and not left the ponchos in the car.

There have been several heavy showers since. I hope they don't end up like drowned rats.

George Bush

Dear me, George really mucked-up today. He was addressing an Australian Business gathering in Sydney town and in front of the TV cameras made a couple of bloopers most unworthy of the President of the U.S.A. Firstly he thanked PM John Howard for being a gracious host to the OPEC meeting. He did of course realise that he had made a blunder and corrected himself with a little blush saying 'of course that is... APEC'. Next he praised our PM for recently visiting his Austrian troops in 'Eyerack'. I guess by now the clip is on You Tube and every news service around the globe will be running it on their evening news slots. Jeez, if I did something like that I would go away and hide. Let's hope he doesn't launch an attack on Austria...we could get severely damaged.

I predicted that the Corryn Rayney murder case would be solved in about a week. Bad guess! Still no suspects on the radar which seems strange as it was rumored that she had been threatened by someone and had asked friends to tell the police if anything happened to her.

It has been bucketing down today and is supposed to ease off tomorrow morning. We hope so, because we are off to the Steely Dan concert at an open-air vineyard venue. The concert is to go ahead regardless of weather conditions, so we went out today to buy ponchos. Awful things which one doesn't see in use these days. Hope we wont need them tomorrow night.

Near neighbors

In today’s newspaper there is an article reporting a large arms deal between our close neighbor, Indonesia and Russia. The deal is worth $1.2 billion and is to purchase 2 new submarines, 22 helicopters and 20 tanks. Let’s hope that most of it is to keep any internal strife under control…but what are the subs for?

I have always thought of Indonesia as a relatively poor country…and it seems that the Australian government also thought that with a large annual aid package given to them. This year’s aid totalled $328,000,000 and the next financial year it will be boosted to $460,000,000.

Indonesia has the largest muslim population of any country and a military of 396,150 persons. Australia hopes to boost our ADF force to 57,000 over the next ten years. Methinks that we should be nice to the U.S. and remain a staunch ally. It worked in WW2.

Bayzil or Bazzil?

Whatever pronunciation you prefer, fresh basil is a fabulous herb, especially with tomatoes. I used some tonight with a tomato concasse (chef term for a thick vegetable sauce/stew - I did a commercial cooking course some years ago and find that the terms pop occasionally into the brain). It was great, served with veal schnitzels, also made from scratch - hammered, egg and breadcrumbed and fried in a small quantity of olive oil with a little bit of butter for taste. And a green salad on the side - lettuce, cucumber and spring onion. Though it's cold tonight, it has been a beautiful sunny day, so summery fare seemed suitable.

While I like to grow my own herbs, I have not managed to keep a basil plant in production in winter. Even the perennial basil is straggly and I don't like its flavour as much as the traditional one. Thank goodness that some local grower keeps the fruit and vegie market down the hill supplied. The bag I bought this weekend was small, but good quality. Not so, the stuff available in the supermarket. Buyer beware.


While basil doesn't like rain and cold, parsley obviously does. The Italian parsley is huge and even the little pot of curly parsley is flourishing. The mint is doing well too. In summer it tends to die back if it is not watered morning and night. At Bicton we had mint planted in a small header pond and we could always find some to harvest.

Helen gave me a kaffir lime for my birthday, and it has now produced some new shoots and leaves after sitting stolidly in the pot for months. And the lemon grass has flowered. I have never had a clump do that before.

Boo Hoo!

I have just lost in an eBay auction. One has to be pretty smart at organising bidding to win. The last three minutes were fast and furious. I believe I was outbid by eBay's auto bidding feature. You put in a maximum amount and eBay bids on your behalf to counter each winning bid. Kev neglected to do that and manual bidding takes important extra seconds to get there. I was trying to win a professional Sony Betacord VCR with little use (5 tapes it was claimed). The winning bid was $225.50. I have heaps of great movies on Beta and my current machine is getting a bit tired. I guess I'll have to get it repaired if I can find an adventurous technician.

In my car hunt for our son, I rang a mechanic we have used before. This guy is a front yard mechanic....a dozen wrecks are a mechanical garden right up to the verge. A variety of parts and tools litter the ground and buckets of dirty oil are standing around. How his neighbors have not had the council come down on him I don't know. I guess he services their cars for free? I thought that he may have a customer who is trying to sell a car, instead he offered one of his cars for sale for $1200. I cruised past his place and saw the car. Rear glass missing; rust, bald tyres and the interior used as a storage place for still more used car parts. No thanks!

Fathers' Day

Our daughter Helen visited and cooked a nice 'Posh Seafood Pie' for this Dad's day. Lovely!

I am still on the used car trail for our son. It is virtually impossible to get to a workplace by public transport if it is not on a bus route or in the city. Australians love single dwellings with our backyards and this causes an urban spread for which it is difficult to provide a workable transport system. I am hoping to pay around $1,000 for a licenced, reasonable car. It can be done; there are little old church-going ladies who want to sell their cars...just got to find one.

We have a 'bring out your dead' collection next week and I have quite a few computer and printer carcasses to get rid of. Each suburb produces different quality treasures for the drive-past collectors. Our suburb is pretty new and I have seen very little in the way of old stuff on the verges. The expert collector knows his suburbs. In New York City the weekly rubbish collection is a treasure trove. The lack of landfill sites means that a walk around Greenwich Village on a nice summer's evening could almost furnish a house with pretty good stuff. We have a wonderful vintage press camera which was put out for collection in the village.

Bugger!

My chilli sauce was going quite nicely last night as we settled down to a bottle of bubbly and TV. The plan was to simmer it for a while to reduce and thicken the sauce. Well, I guess you know what happened then....it 'caught' and burnt on the saucepan. Today I went and bought more chillies and this time pumpkin for thickening and colour. This lot turned out very well indeed...proud of myself! I now have to design some labels for the bottles.

Martin our son, is on the job trail again and I looked in the Quokka (a local free-ad paper), for a cheap car. There was one advertised quite close to us here and I went to look at it. The asking price is $800, but it is two days off running out of registration and the owner says that it has a problem with the auto transmission. I drove it and it functioned well. It has done only 88,000 kilometres and was owned by her grandmother. I am tempted to buy it, but if a gearbox repair is necessary later, the cost would be around $2,000. We have had lots of bad luck (or bad judgement) with our son's cars.

Chilli sauce

Long time friends of ours have just celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary. On the eve of their anniversary they received a phone call from their daughter who works and lives in Karratha. She asked them what they were doing on the day to which they replied that they would go out to lunch somewhere in their town, Mandurah. No they weren't: she had booked them on a plane for an overnight in Karratha for dinner with her. There is lots of money to be made working in a north-west mining town!

When we were in Los Angeles we visited the Farmers Market. One of the stalls there was solely devoted to various types of chilli sauce. There must have been hundreds of varieties all made by the stall holders. We bought a small bottle and it is very nice...and hot! So today, Kev has been brewing up his own chilli sauce and it is shaping up very nicely. Large hot chilli, tomato puree, some apples, some potato, vinegar and a little salt and sugar. Ready to bottle tomorrow. The name of my sauce: 'Ring of fire'.

I have been delaying visiting a friend who has mesothelioma. I have not seen much of him in the last 49 years when we both did an apprenticeship at the State Engineering Works. After he finished his trade he went to sea as a ship's engineer and that is the most likely reason that he contracted that disease. Ships in those days used lots of asbestos lagging on pipes and the crew was constantly renewing lagging. I am not good at sitting with people who are about to die. It is not so bad when they are quite old and have had a long and good life. Colin is about 69 years old. What can I say to him?

ex students

I had three contacts with ex-students today...amazing! Two were through the internet. Facebook has certainly taken off and I have had four 'youngies' requesting that I become their facebook friends. At 67 I think I am a little old for all that....however? The first contact was through the SchoolFriends network by a girl (now woman) I taught at Cecil Andrews' Senior High School in 1989. The second one was through FaceBook and I taught her at Willetton SHS in the 90s (?). Then this evening I had a phone call from an early 80s student from Rockingham SHS. He, Sean, did a commerce degree and is about to finish a B.Ed and enter teaching. Sean and his wife Denise have sold their house in western Sydney and are having a caravan built to their specs to travel around Aus for a couple of years getting work where they can. Sean and the family are visiting W.A. and us over Xmas.

Our daughter Helen had me take pics of her Pre-Primary class and print them to a size for making Fathers Day key-rings. She has a lovely bunch of kids and they love their Ms Lock.

Joan entered a piece in the Melville Art Awards and although she didn't win a prize, it was bought for $550. I reckon she should start making more of the same and flog 'em off. I have been told by an artist friend that real artists don't do that.

Good news

Today I drove Joan to Sir Charles Gardiner Hospital for a follow-up investigation after her recall following a mammogram. It was to be an all-day affair to determine if the dense area which showed up on the mammogram was anything serious. By 11.30am she rang me and it was all over. It was good news...nothing abnormal there.

We have just delivered our Hyundai Sonata to the dealer for a warranty repair. The seatbelt warning signal is malfunctioning and the warning buzzer continues to sound even when the driver is belted up. Warranty repairs are always a worry for me....are they going to tell me that 'that wasn't covered under section 43/4 of the warranty agreement'. We'll find out later today.

I googled Sonata seatbelt warning and found a forum where someone in the U.S. was asking how to turn off the seatbelt warning. He got a nasty reply suggesting he was an idiot and a moron and should be wearing his belt. In Western Australia it is illegal to not wear your seat belt fastened and upon reading the message again it seems that the person posting the question was indeed trying to disable the warning so that he could drive without a seatbelt. Having been in a major car crash and being thrown through the windscreen (before seat belts were even fitted to cars) I know we would have done far less damage to ourselves had we been wearing belts.

One of our kitchen cabinets looks darkly at me when I have a few glasses of wine. I can't image what it would look like if I were using mind-altering substances.

The good and not so good

Today we drove to Sawyers Valley in the hills above Perth. A fellow up there had emailed me offering a late model iMac for $50???? I have been donated stuff from him in the past. When we arrived at his place in a bush setting, I asked why did he not advertise the computer and get at least seven times what he was asking. His simple answer was that he hates selling things and didn't want people coming up from the city making a noise in his area and haggling over price.

He is a retired psychologist who migrated to W.A. from the U.S. in 1967. I will write him a nice letter of thanks with some money to buy himself a bottle of decent wine. Still can't believe that he 'gave' it to me for $50!

Joan had a mammogram on Tuesday and everything looked OK. Yesterday she received a phone call informing her that there was a dense area which needed further investigation. Not good! She is to go to Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital on Tuesday for what looks like being a a day's investigation. She has been informed that they will make a definite diagnosis before she leaves the hospital. I will drop her off in the morning and collect her when all is done. We both hope it is not a serious problem and the nurse who rang stressed that it was not a 'lump'.