Tiger Moths

Early this morning I heard a loud noise which I knew was a bunch of aircraft doing a fly-past of ANZAC day services. I dashed out to take a look and realised that I didn't need to dash as they were Tiger Moth biplanes doing what looked like a sedate 60 mph...plenty of time to take a good look. There were six of them in formation and then two more trying desperately to catch up to the formation. 'Wait for us' they were yelling over the speaker tube.

Our local Magpies cruised in again this morning to get some grated Parmesan cheese. They love it and I reckon they will be spending the rest of the day looking for a cheese tree. They also love meat scraps as does the single large Raven that visits us. Yesterday I got a bit tired of hand feeding them and put the polystyrene meat tray with the scraps out on the lawn. Both the Raven and the maggies were most suspicious of this new thing. The maggies wouldn't go near it, but the Raven gingerly picked it up and tipped the meat scraps off the tray before wolfing them down. Smart bird!

I have mentioned this scam before, but it is worthwhile doing it again. This card was in yesterday's edition of the West Australian newspaper. It has been around in various forms in various media..newspapers, magazines and TV. I am sure many people will fall for this one as it is in a respectable publication. Printed on the top of the card in very small text is a disclaimer ...'This promotion is not connected with this publication', which virtually lets the West Australian off the hook.
The card has three scratchy panels and if you scratch and find three identical objects ,you win. I did and every other Western Australian who scratched also won. Next step is to SMS the winner code and pay $10. every six days for their content service which is advertising and jokes sent to your phone. If you don't unsubscribe they will continue automatically billing you at $10 each 6 days. Oh, and you don't actually win the MercedesSLK.

The Cyclopedia of Western Australia

I have borrowed ‘The Cyclopedia of Western Australia’ published in 1912 from a friend. It is a wonderful 776 pages full of facts and figures about everything Western Australian. As ex teachers we were very interested to read up on Education in 1911.

A few figures:

The population of the state in 1911 was 277,928 persons.

There were 495 schools staffed by 1095 teachers.

There was only one secondary school…Modern School in Subiaco,which is still in operation. When it was established it was a selective school for the State's brightest. Many famous Australians were students there including a Prime Minister (Bob Hawke the "Silver Bodgie"). In the 1960s it became a regular High School, catering to its local school population. In the last couple of years it has once again reverted to being a selective school.

Modern School in 1911

There were no universities, but UWA was in the planning stages.

Staffing in remote areas was done by a Government grant of seven pounds per teacher per year and settlers were obliged to make up the rest to a total of sixty pounds annual salary.

An interesting subsidy for pupils outside the three mile radius from the school is shown here…
Interestingly…there were 8,000 telephones served by 40 exchanges.

The shame of it all

The U.S. bosses of the world-wide Hell's Angels motor cycle gang have taken the cane to the Australian chapter. The word is that they must toughen up and stop acting like a mob of wimps. Every time they see the opposition Comancheros they have been ordered to take a few potshots at them. The Aussies have even been banned from the soon to be held World Run. Can't have their bad boy reputation going soft.

As with the Mafia in the 30s, the cops would do well to just let them at each other to thin them out a bit. The police could establish a special fomentation unit using Facebook to do schoolboy/schoolgirl type bullying of each side to get the ball rolling. These police officers would have special teenage advisors to help with framing appropriate language and nastiness. I can see it now; 'You Comancheros should be riding postie Hondas' or ' Hells Angels have wimpy beards'. You can see that I am too nice to be really good at this sort of thing. I should go back to teaching at a private girls' school to hone up my Facebook skills.

Shorpy

It has been only a couple of days since the Indonesian fishing boat transporting Afghan refugees exploded and created not only mayhem for the refugees who were dispersed to hospitals across Australia for major surgery, but also political troubles for the Australian government which is being accused of going soft on ‘queue jumpers’.

It seems that there was a plan to elicit emergency treatment by dousing the boat with petrol in the event that the boat was to be turned around and sent back to Indonesia. Probably some dill lit a cigarette and boom.

Coincidentally yesterday there was a raid on Afghans in a coastal resort near Jakarta seeing the arrest of a large number of ‘refugees’ who were awaiting a boat to attempt a crossing to Australian soil.

Is this just a coincidence or is the Indonesian President helping out his Aussie mate Kevin Rudd, by coming down hard on these refos?

Ute V Pickup. A recent set of Australian postage stamps feature Australian inventions. One of them is the Ute. The Ute is a pickup truck, supposedly invented by a farmer in Australia in 1934. Today I was trolling through a site I have joined called ‘Shorpy’. It is a wonderful site featuring historical photographs in high definition, mainly from the U.S. There are thousands of photos accompanied by comments by people who remember a particular street, event or people. They go back to the American Civil War. The photos are arranged in categories such as buildings, bridges, wars etc. I found a reference to a 1926 Ford Pickup in a section dealing with kitchens and household items. Apparently Ford manufactured ‘utes’ or pickups as early as 1926 and although the general public could only buy them in black, companies ordering a fleet of them could get them painted in their own colours. Here is a link to that site.

I highly recommend you visit Shorpy, so named after a 14 year old lad who worked in a mine in Alabama a hundred years ago. Find it here.

Nigerian scams

A couple of days ago there was a newspaper story about three people who were taken in by Nigerian scammers. Surprisingly an elderly fellow who lives in Busselton allowed the West Australian newspaper to tell his story along with a large photo of himself. He even got on TV the following night. I’d ‘lie doggo’ if I got conned by a Nigerian scam. He must be a laughing stock in his home town.

Admittedly this was a complex and I guess somewhat believable, scenario involving a U.S. military officer who claimed to have two cases of Saddam Hussein’s cash totalling $50m of which our hapless sucker was to get half for facilitating the illegal importation of 50 huges ones.

That should have rung some warning bells. I reckon just about everyone with an email address in Australia has had a similar email and trashed it as ‘dodgy’. Not this bloke.
And what was his trade?…a financial advisor.

Fiji coup d'etat

Our daughter Helen gave me a little job over the Easter weekend. She had my hot glue gun with a spare stick of glue on her car seat ready to return after work on Wednesday. Parked at her work the car turned into an oven and melted both glue sticks into the fabric of her car seats. Google is your friend for stuff like this. I followed what seemed the most sensible instructions from a long list and was successful in getting it all out.

Method: Heat up glue with a hair drier or heat gun. Remove most of the glue with a table knife. Reheat the remnants again and sponge off with rag and mineral turps. Repeat until all removed.

The recent coup d’etat in Fiji has demolished democracy in that island state. I guess that not many people are aware of the background of the the coup. Fijian indigenous people are almost a minority population in their own country. The 2007 census has Indigenous Fijians as 56.8%, Indians as 37.5% and others making up the rest of the population.

The British colonial masters brought the first Indians to Fiji in 1879 and over the following 37 years 61,000 others were brought in as indentured labour to work in the sugar industry. It has been said that the colonials didn’t employ native Fijians for fear that it would ‘destroy their way of life’, but it is more likely that the Indians were more used to such employment than Fijians.

Since those days, Indians have prospered and populated to the point where there has for many years been resentment and some racial discord. Indians own most of the businesses and (did) hold high positions in the Judiciary. The customs and religions of the two main groups differ so much that it sets them apart.

I know that if Australia ever had such a large influx of migrants of a single ethnic group, there would be much more trouble than there is in Fiji at the moment.

Booted for being gay

In our local giveaway newspaper there is a lead story about a gay bloke/guy who was accepted into a rented house as a housemate after he had disclosed that he was gay. I guess I could have (in an intoxicated moment) done the same. It turns out that the gay guy brought home a boy and did what they do. The tenant decide he didn't like that much and kicked the gay guy out. So now the gay guy is taking the bloke to court for discrimination against a person because of their sexual persuasion. I am guessing that there are some other factors involved here, which I shall leave to the imagination of the reader.

Here is our man with his new flatmate who doesn't discriminate against gays. Is this story a ploy to gain him some new friends?

The second story also relates to sex. A couple of very influential Catholic clergy, Cardinal Pell of NSW and Archbishop Hickey of Western Australia have backed the Pope in his knowledgeable wordliness suggesting that condoms are not the answer to Africa and indeed Papua New Guinea's AIDS epidemic. Bah, Humbug!

I must be joining the Grumpy Old Men when I get upset about sports reporters talking about courageous footballers. I thought courageous was a word reserved for firefighters, soldiers in battle and others who as part of their job faced real dangers.

Sculpture Walk 2009

Early this morning we went to Piney Lakes to catch the last day of the Sculpture Walk 2009. Piney Lakes is a beautiful area with nice paths around the lake and ponds. The sculptures were great. We took photos of all of them but here are my three favourites. In descending order the first one is Artificial Limb; the second is percussion water lilies (my name for this wonderful sound piece) and the third one is a Redback in a tree.

This Easter weekend I placed another two computers with university students. I am running out of monitors, so this evening drove to Mosman Park where the residents are getting rid of their junk in a verge collection starting tomorrow. These collections are usually called 'bring out your dead'. In the short time I cruised the Mosman Park streets I saw dozens of monitors (CRT monitors are definitely out these days) but alas I found only one that didn't have the video cord cut off. Some scroat has gone around salvaging what must now be 2c worth of copper wire and making the monitors useless for recycling for blokes like me. I guess I am the only person who is out looking for a CRT monitor...every with-it computer user has a flatscreen monitor now.

Red Cross Blood Bank

Joan and I gave blood this morning. It is Joan’s 61st donation. I am unsure of how many I have made because records haven’t been kept for donations starting back in the 50s.

The screening process is thorough…. questions about who you did it with and where; where you have visited and lived etc etc. With each new interviewer the Malaria thing comes up again. “Where did you contract Malaria; when and almost Why?’

The Blood Bank is run by the Red Cross with suitable government support along with support from lotteries and health funds. It must cost a fortune to run. The bags for whole blood donations cost around $30 and the bags for just plasma cost around $100. The machinery, specialist donor stations, the staff and the generous refreshments must make my 470ml of whole blood very expensive.

The woman who interviewed me asked if I wanted to donate plasma. I said I would, but then she suggested that as I was to have the big birthday (70) at the end of the year it was probably too late. Too late! 70 is not an age for one to be told it is too late!

Of course what she meant was that one can no longer donate after turning 70.

There was a bit of drama in the courtyard outside the bloodbank. It seems that someone had walked in and stolen a bicycle parked there by a donor. The receptionist noticed a footprint in the sand and called the cops. The poor cop was supposed to do a forensic job on the footprint and nab the wheely thief. He politely informed them that CIS is actually a fictional TV show and he couldn’t do much for them.

Passionfruit

I have a couple of passionfruit plants in large pots; one along a fence and the other climbing up a brick wall. The experts say that you cannot successfully grow passionfruit in pots, but as I have no bare soil where they get sun, they are in pots. Both vines are going great guns. They get plenty of water and feed, but only one of them is setting fruit. The fruiting vine produces lots of flowers with plenty of pollen. The other vine produces flowers, but no pollen?? I have trawled the net and a few other people are having the same problem, but nobody has come up with a solution. The usual answer is 'Rip them out and start again'. We have decided to let the non producer continue doing a good job of covering a fibro cement fence.

I heard of a good non-messy mulch for plant pots...champagne corks. We used to collect them for the Girl Guides fund raising efforts, but now most wine bottles are screw tops. The corks look good and we know that we are helping the Australian wine industry.

1930 Proof Penny

On the 7.30 report on ABC television tonight there was an item about a 1930 Penny up for sale at an asking price of $2m. I remember as a kid back in the 40s and 50s checking every penny for the fabled 1930 one. The one that is up for sale is one of six proof coins produced by the Melbourne Mint. Other 1930 coins still bring a fair bit of money, but not in the league of this proof example.

The report made me think about all the pre-decimal coins of Australia. Almost all the coins and notes had common names....a threepenny coin was called a Tray; the sixpence was a Zak, the shilling was a Bob or a Deener. The two shilling Florin was called Two Bob; the ten shilling note was Ten Bob and the one Pound note was a Quid. I cannot recall the halfpenny or penny having names. Higher denominations didn't seem to have common names....probably because not many people regularly had them in hand.

Joan has just googled a discussion about pre-decimal coin names and their reputed origins. Quite interesting, but I believe the origin of Deener can be linked to WW1 and the Arabic dinar.

Our current decimal coinage and notes don't have popular common names. How strange!

Mulloway and smashed potatoes

Joan cooked a wonderful meal tonight. Smashed Potatoes and Mulloway. When I heard that she was cooking Mulloway I was a little skeptical. Mulloway is a large estuarine fish that anglers are happy to hook, but probably dig in under their rose bushes rather than eating.

The recipe goes like this.......Boil the spuds in their jackets, give them a bit of a smack to break them open then pop them in the oven at about 180c with a smear of butter, herbs and sea salt until they start to crisp up.
Fry the fish in a shallow olive oil and butter mix and serve the lot with a green salad. Yum!

I gave away a couple of computers today to people who are probably not at the bottom of the economic heap. I try to help needy people, but often the needy do not express their thanks and although it is my aim to help people, everyone needs satisfaction for what they are doing; especially if it is as a gift which involves time, effort and money.

I rang Graham, our friend from Sydney who stayed with us over a week recently. He is the quintessential wordsmith and it is only because he downgraded our accommodation rating to four stars ( due to a lack of bananas for breakfast and the lack of a hand-basin sink plug) that I have started looking seriously at his spelling in his emails to us. I did tell him that this is a little payback. I found two typos in his last two emails. Ha!

Scenes from an Italian Restaurant

Our house guest, Graham, left for Sydney at around 7.30am. As expected we were both awake from 4.45 am….the travel nervies! We headed off at 6am to Perth domestic airport taking just 30 minutes. An hour later and it would have taken an hour. His visit was most pleasant and I wondered whether at my age of 69+ we would meet up again.

Graham shouted us a meal at a local Italian restaurant last night. Joan had Veal Marsala. The last time she had that meal was about 30 years ago and tastes do change. She found it far too sweet for today’s taste. We had a large antipasto as an entree and it was really enough for me without the main of Spaghetti Marinara. I did the unthinkable and asked for a doggy bag. Might attack it tonight.

Around lunch time today I visited John in the nursing home and gave him a haircut and a shave. Whilst there another friend was visiting his wife who is bedridden. That is also a sad story. He wants her to go. I could not make a comment on that.

He saw me cutting John’s hair and asked if I could cut his, there and then, in the nursing home. I did a very quick job as I didn’t think the administration would care for me cutting the hair of visitors to their establishment. I didn’t get busted and I hope the cut wasn’t good enough that he will want more free haircuts.

Uncle Jay explains the news

Uncle Jay can explain the news for most of us ordinary folk. I get my extensive knowledge base of world affairs with the help of Uncle Jay. Check him out here. If you are like us with slow bandwidth, you might have to wait until the whole episode loads to view it properly.

However, Uncle Jay hasn't explained to me how thousands of people can join the G20 protests which inevitably end up being hijacked by extremists. Uncle Jay would probably suggest that the organisers don't disclose where and when the meetings are going to be held and wouldn't the owners and insurers of all those wrecked buildings along the route be pleased?

Kalgoorlie

Graham, our guest from Sydney, left early Thursday morning on a drive to Kalgoorlie, Esperance, Albany and back home. He is due back on Monday afternoon. Graham made arrangements to meet up with a colleague who lives in Kalgoorlie, who also taught in Papua New Guinea. Unfortunately his friend was driving in the opposite direction heading to Perth, so they met briefly in a country town as their paths crossed.

Graham apologised to us for downgrading his accommodation at our place. We lost one star for not having any bananas for his breakfast before his departure. Must try and win back that star.

Kalgoorlie is a gold mining town and has a bit of a wild west feel to it. Recently the City Fathers attempted to pull the whip on liquor outlets to cut down on the brawls ensuing. Don't know how that went. There is plenty to see over a two day visit. Lots of fine buildings and history, the super pit and of course there is Hay Street and the tourist brothel.

Our daughter Helen has settled back into her unit and was successful in getting all her bond money back from her previous apartment in South Perth. Where she lives in East Victoria Park is not as salubrious as South Perth and already some of the tenants' cars, including hers, have been damaged in break-ins. The block of units does not have any security fence or lights and is easy pickings for the local hoods.

Lock's Tour of the 'burbs

Today our guest from Sydney town, Graham, demanded a reciprocal tour of the suburbs. When we were in Sydney a few weeks ago he did the same for us.

Graham lives in the suburb of Kirrawee which is a very leafy, hilly place, so I thought I would work our way up to Kalamunda which is similar, and has a nice 'village' feel to it. We started off going to Guildford and then on to Midland Junction. From there to Mundaring and across to Mundaring Weir and the original pumping station for the Perth-Kalgoorlie water pipeline. We had lunch at a nice cafe in Kalamunda and then looked around the town before going to Willetton, Bicton, then Mosman Park and Peppermint Grove where the rich people live. Back home through Fremantle.

I found that a bit wearying, but Graham decided on a lengthy walk around Bibra Lake as soon as we arrived home. I'll just sit down and suck on a cool drink.

This is our 500th posting on Lock Family Ramblings.

Saint-Pierre and Miquelon

This evening I watched an SBS programme on TV called Thalassa. It was about a French island named Saint-Pierre which is just 24 kilometres from Canada's Newfoundland. It is part of a small group of islands called the Territorial Collectivity of Saint Pierre and Miquelon. There are two main islands, Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. They both have a small population of fisher-folk and export frozen fish labelled..Made In France.

The islands are very cold and windy and a good late summer's day could be described as a bit bleak by Aus standards.

I confess to have not known anything about this French possession and when you read Wikipedia about it you will find a very interesting story. Here it is.

Thus endeth today's lesson.

National Hero

Film maker Damien Lay reckons he has found the wreck of Sir Charles Kingsford Smith's plane off the coast of Burma after 75 years. Kingsford Smith was quite the Australian hero of the time. See the Kingsford Smith Wikipedia entry here. It is a good read.

Heroes usually have a team of unsung heroes and 'Smithy's' co-pilot on his last flight was my father's cousin Tom Pethybridge. Over the last 50 or so years whenever the topic of aircraft has come up I, wishing to grab a bit of history, have blurted out that my father's cousin Tom died along with Smithy.....usually to no comment or looks of 'Oh yeah?'. Well today's newspaper report about the discovery of the plane mentioned Tom, my sort of fourth cousin....so there!

Tomorrow our daughter Helen hands back the keys to the apartment she has been living in for the past six months. We have been helping her with fixing chips and cracks and matching up paint. Easy, I thought, but matching colours by eye in dodgy light is very difficult. Eventually Joan and I did a reasonable job on a few walls, but adding artists' acrylic to wall paint caused it to lose the slight sheen the rest of the wall has. Seeing that the owner and the rental agent have treated her shabbily, I came up with a way of creating a slight sheen by gently wiping the affected area of wall with a small amount of hair conditioner mixed with water. Should do the job.

In another room a picture hanger managed to leave some sticky stuff behind. Removing that proved a problem so we made a dozen attempts to match the purple paint to cover it. No joy! I ended up getting a near match and repainted the entire wall. Hope Helen doesn't shift again for a few years.

Helen settles in

Our daughter Helen made the move back into her own unit today. She has used the same removalist three times in her recent shifts and will be using him again when she eventually buys a house. This fellow is an Israeli and is always pleasant and inexpensive. Today they (he and his assistant) made two trips taking up all morning for the grand total of $350. Split that two ways with fuel and a lot of effort and they are not rolling in cash.

Helen still does not have a full-time teaching position, but the relief work is getting better. She reckons that three days a week relief, seeing that she will not be paying rent should be quite adequate.

One of the aboriginal women I have had contact with whilst distributing computers must have thought that I needed a bit of help from JC. She included me in the bulk email shown here.....

God has seen you struggling, God says it's over.

A blessing is coming your way.

If you believe in God send to ten people, please don't ignore, you are being tested.

JUST 19 WORDS


GOD OUR FATHER,
WALK THROUGH MY HOUSE
AND TAKE AWAY ALL MY WORRIES AND ILLNESSES;
IN JESUS ' NAME. AMEN


This prayer is so powerful.
Pass this prayer to 12 people including me

What will happen if I don't pass it on?

Humbug rental agents

Busy, busy, busy today! This morning I collected seven reasonably late model Macs from W.A. Newspapers. They are Mirror Door G4s and very nice too! I had to sign a document saying that I was not going to sell them and that they were to be given to needy people...easy.

After lunch I went to our daughter Helen's unit to help remove mould from walls and ceilings after the tenants moved out on the weekend. Yesterday Helen was a bit 'testy' as the tenants should have had the mould cleaned off. She told the rental agents that it was because the tenants kept all the windows and doors shut. They denied that and claimed it was because of concrete cancer in the walls allowing water to dampen the walls. I wish that I had been there as I am less likely to be brow-beaten by their BS. There is mould inside wardrobes! Last year I did some maintenance on Helen's unit at the request of the tenants. The couple are from India and the wife could not speak one word of English. I noticed that all the windows were shut and that the walls were wet with condensation. Helen told the agents and they noticed it at the next inspection and reported to Helen that the tenants were told to open windows to allow fresh air in. Even after that they still claim that the mould is due to concrete cancer.

The problem here is that whilst Helen is a client of the rental agency, the mining company who leased her unit is also a client of the rental agency. The mining company has six units/houses leased through the agency, so they are much more valuable clients. It is a bit like a policeman being investigated for some misdemeanor by the police.

Anyway, bleach is the saviour. Most of the mould has been removed. Can I blame bleach for my greying hair?

On Sunday last we drove down south to Bunbury. Bunbury is a very nice seaside city. It is a while since we were there last and we were impressed. We had lunch at a fish restaurant on the estuary...good food at a reasonable price in a nice setting overlooking the water. We had travelled down there to buy a set of seats for Martin's car. Since he has lost his drivers licence I have decided to pretty the car up and sell it. We will keep the money; probably around $1,000 and use it to pay the big fine that is almost certainly coming. The seats are good and I have installed them and will advertise the car this next week. It is a Daihatsu Charade 3 cylinder car and runs on the smell of an oily rag. A good selling point with today's petrol prices.

I placed another three computers today. They were older model iMacs loaded with heaps of educational software and games. They have gone to three aboriginal families with the hope that they will get good use.

More chilli sauce

I have a few nice chilli bushes in the garden and I blame them for the slight obsession I have with making chilli sauce. Yesterday's effort was a small brew, but a good brew and I bottled it in a couple of small bottles. Trouble is, I don't write down exactly what amounts of various ingredients I put in the blender, so it doesn't always taste the same. It usually burns the same though.

I have tried the pickling method where all the ingredients are minced and then steeped in vinegar. Yesterday's small batch was liquefied and then simmered for 10-15 minutes. I think the latter method is a sauce and the former a pickle.

I just had a shave and shower and reflected on the injustice done by old age. My legs now have very little hair on them, but my ear hairs and eyebrows grow at a rate that tomato gardeners would be proud of. The eyebrow hairs no longer have that soft feeling that my wife felt against her face many years ago....now they are like barbed wire and need cutting with secateurs. I have to look carefully in the mirror to check whether there is not a long flag-like hair trailing from my ear.

Damn!

Spam, not ham

I seem to have friends and rellies who send me those very important messages asking me to send them on to all my contacts.

In the last few days I have received three of these annoying messages; one from an ex-student which tells of a dying girl in hospital in New York. The story is in the form of a very syrupy poem designed to rope in the emotionally gullible. It urges you to forward it on to as many people as you can.

‘By sending this to as many people as possible, you can give her and her family a little hope , because with every name that this is sent to, the American Cancer Society will donate 3 cents to her treatment and recovery plan….One guy sent this to 500 people! So I know that we can at least send it to 5 or 6. It’s not even your money, just your time!’

Another forwarded email told of ‘four things that you didn’t know about your mobile phone’. Those four things are furphies too.

The last one I received was an urban myth about a bloke who got a gas bill for $0.00 and the supposed run around he got and gave back to the utility and a bank. This one was reworked to suit Australia with local banks and town names slotted in to a story doing the rounds in the U.S. years ago.

The amazing thing is that when shown to be just urban myths their forwarders don’t do anything. I hereby promise that if I ever have a brain failure and forward stuff like that I will immediately post an apology to all and sundry and ask that they do the same to the 300 people that they have forwarded it on to. Jeez think of all the electrons racing around cyberspace transporting urban myths and conspiracy theories. I’ll take spam any day!

If you are dubious about such messages, you can check them out here....http://www.snopes.com/

Of course the conspiracy theorists claim that Snopes is an arm of government and is covering up important, true stories circulating on the net.

Open the Gates

Micro$oft woes

We use Microsoft Office 2004. It used to work OK, but just recently we have been receiving a few documents with the suffix .docX and 2004 cannot open them.

It seems that the trouble is a gift from MS in the form of a new form of document which is part of Office 2007 and 2008.

It isn’t a problem in most cases as people can resend them as PDFs....problem solved!

If for some reason the sender can’t create a PDF then we can go through a series of steps downloading updates for Office 2004; then loading on a downloaded patch which converts the .docX to a regular .doc file. Fixed.

This does not only apply to Macs; PCs with Office 2004 also have the same problem.
Bet there is plenty of money to be made by Mr Fixit computer guys.

Most of the computers I have distributed have parts of Office 2004 loaded. Hope I don’t get too many call backs to fix that problem.

From big things, little things grow

Recently at Sevenoaks College I was rummaging through mountains of computers and peripherals looking for goodies for my project. I came across a few Hard Drives including this 1984 baby. It is a Fujitsu of about 10 Mb capacity. I thought of levering it into a laptop.

The regular computer Hard Drive looks like this.

Laptop Hard Drives are about half that size and iPod hard drives are positively mini drives.
I have read somewhere that after some 50 years someone has actually manufactured and marketed a Dick Tracy two way watch. If you don't remember what a Dick Tracy watch is like you are just too young.....Google is your friend.

Bitter sweet feelings

One of the networks that circulated the message about the free Macs was DIA (Department of Indigenous Affairs). I was pretty happy to be involved in helping underprivileged indigenes get a computer and backup assistance. Out of the seven who contacted me and gave me their story (not that I wanted to hear why they wanted a computer) all seemed very worthy causes and I had no reservation helping out.

I was a little taken aback by what seemed a grab. One lady I delivered a computer to was sitting smoking in front of a massive wide screen TV. Two recent model cars were in the driveway.

Another lady wasn't home when I delivered her Mac. I had to negotiate the debris of neglect in the yard to get to the front door which was badly damaged, along with windows and fly screens. Thankfully her daughter, through a two inch gap in the front door, told me to leave the computer on the front verandah. The house looked like a typical public housing house on an aboriginal settlement up north....damaged beyond repair. This lady has a government job.

OK ....rethink. There are many similar people out there in whitey world. I just haven't met any of them this time around. Get a grip Kev, and don't be too mean.

Botox Bert

One of the requests for a free computer I received yesterday was from a first year university student. Our education system is in crisis if this young guy graduates.
Last night I sat through a repeat of 'Botox' Bert Newton's TV program 20 - 1. It was called the 20 biggest dummy spits......most of them very old shots of people getting a bit testy. Poor TV!

Telstra's boss Sol Trujillo has announced he is going back home to the U.S.. He is taking his Three Amigos with him. When Sol won the top job, he imported three of his U.S. colleagues from home to help him fix Australia's telco. He is leaving us with a nice package of $3m cash and up to $20m in options. Not bad for a 3 year stint at the reins. Last year his salary package was $13.4M.
Prime Minister Rudd was asked what he thought of Sol's departure and all he could manage was 'Adios'. Sol looks like a Mel Brooks character.

Telstra has not been doing as well of late. Many people are using mobile phones rather than traditional landlines.

We are all doomed!

Bold headlines on the front page of the West Australian newspaper yesterday proclaim that Family power bills will rocket by $246 a year . Shock; horror! That works out to about $4.74 a week.....about half the price of a cheap bottle of bubbly of which we consume quite a few each week.

People need to live in a place where electricity is non existent or comes at a few hours a day. A couple of days without power and everyone would start to change their attitudes. Only in an outage does one realise what it would be like without a good power supply....same goes for good clean tap water delivered to our doors.

Actually I haven't heard anyone whinge about the proposed increases; it's just a newspaper shocko story.

I have been working like a Palestinian one-armed bricklayer over the last four days distributing computers to a wide variety of worthy causes. It has been good for me. I have enjoyed preparing machines to suit individual needs; giving a short run down on the operating system and meeting people from all walks of life. I have learned much about the inner workings of different models and managed to get 'dead' machines once again working.

I was initially offered another lot of later model Macs by an IT bloke working in a private company, but his boss is reluctant to hand them over because I am not a registered charity. The IT man has appealed to his boss on my behalf, but I haven't heard from them yet. I guess he thinks that I may be selling them on. W.A. Newspapers have offered me some more as well and I should get them in a fortnight.

Avian discrimination

I read an article in today's newspaper about the Israeli President selecting Benjamin Netanyahu as Prime Minister. Ben was described as Hawkish. This is blatant discrimination against hawks! How is it that Hawks get to be the bad guys and Eagles the proud, good guys that many nations have used as national symbols?

The almost concerning interest in Free Computers as communicated to all and sundry has made me a little worried about the possibility of Apple Computer asking me about software licencing. Asking me??? They could sue the poo out of me! I have thought it over and the operating system I am loading on each machine can no longer be purchased from Apple and so could well fall into the category of 'Legacy Software'. Also, I wonder about the millions of computers that end up changing hands and given to others without the original OS disks? I don't think Apple would want bad publicity over a handful of Macs going to worthy cases if it went to court.

I just rang an Apple retailer and neither OS 10.3 or 10.4 are for sale. The salesperson suggested that they could possibly be bought on eBay or a local free paper called the Quokka.

Yesterday I talked with an IT colleague at a large W.A. senior high school and he informed me that they have up to 400 PCs heaped in passageways. The government has a policy of turning over computers every 4 years. There are 64 government high schools in W.A.....computer overload!

The power of the internet

A friend, Paul, writes a daily blog. This morning he wrote about my efforts to distribute refurbished computers to needy people locally. His posting included my email address and by 11am I had fielded about 15 emails and phone calls from people wanting one of the Macs. By evening two computers had been collected and another 8 were set aside for weekend pickups. I wasn't really prepared for such a response. I shall have to get busy preparing another lot in case this level of interest continues. Also during the day I received two emails from people who want to donate more Macs. I admit to feeling a sense of satisfaction from the response and the genuine thanks that I have received from those who have contacted me.

The amazing trail of the spread of this information started with a lady who told me that she had read Paul's blog and would put the information on a librarians' news site. From there it went to a number of other sites; probably about ten.

A young woman who came at 7pm to collect one of the computers, works for Aboriginal Affairs and has also had a lot to do with Women's Refuges and female ex-prisoners. She can see that placing some of these computers in refuges and prisons will greatly benefit these unfortunate women. I hope I can continue to collect and distribute machines that otherwise would end up in landfill.

Paul's blog can be read here...well worth a serious look. http://fremantlebiz.livejournal.com/

Cults

Last night Joan went to a meeting of WAFTA (W.A. Fibre and Textile Association) It finished quite late and we ate when she returned home. I was watching a documentary by an English chap named Louis Theroux. Yes I know,that doesn't really sound like a Britisher, but he is.
The doco was quite disturbing. It dealt with a religious cult in the U.S. and their railings against the Fag government . They specialise in going to funerals of military people killed in Iraq and Afganistan and yelling insults and waving large signs declaring the dead to be faggots and never to see heaven. It seems that the government is to blame by allowing same sex marriages and that all citizens, apart from them, have condoned it.

As usual they have an elderly prophet having fathered lots of children in the group. Unlike many other crazy sects this lot have the most foul abuse to anyone who is not of their faith. It would seem that only they are going to get to heaven. I am surprised that in such a gun-happy society nobody has dispatched them and sent them off to heaven.

One of the units we own has had a fence problem for some time. I entered into a verbal agreement with the neighbor of our unit....I would have another row of limestone blocks laid and he would replace the three sheets of fibro-cement fencing. Easy....except he didn't keep his end of the bargain. I rang him this evening and it was still a no go. 'Maaaaate, I have been in hospital several times...me liver has packed it in....I will do the job if I can get me missus to help coz I'm as weak as a kitten!' Yeah Right! BS artist!

Second chance

Just had a few drinks with my brother Graham. He has been single, apart from a few short partnerships, for the last 24 years. Just lately he has been working at finding a partner to spend the rest of his life with. He is almost ten years younger than me. It seems that he has found a soul-mate and they have spent lots of time together over the past two weeks. At his age, 59, he and his new partner have much to come to terms with.....she likes opera and ballet; Graham doesn't. 'What is the point of listening to Pavarotti if he sings in a foreign language????' Graham likes different music, different food and different comedy. I guess a successful partnership recognises individual differences. Ours does.

I have made up some fliers to put up in shopping centres to place all the computers I have readied to give away. I suspect that people will not believe that I am offering free computers, tutorials and telephone backup with no 'catches'. Landfill is the only other option.

We were tonight thinking back on our South Pacific cruise. The fares were too cheap allowing too many yobbos to disturb our once in a lifetime. Mr. Rudd is to blame...throwing lots of dollars at the peasants. Confession here....we got a handout from Kev too. I guess that the money did help suppliers and their employees. Someone in Australia must get some benefit from the 16 miles of cocktail sausages etc purchased in Sydney prior to departure.

Albatross

When we were in Sydney town recently, I visited the National Maritime Museum in Darling Harbour. It had an exhibition of photographs and text from the diary of a young American fellow who prior to attending university, decided to take a sea journey on a whaling ship from the U.S. east coast to Fremantle in 1905. It was a wonderful exhibition on loan from the Smithsonian in Washington and I will see if the Fremantle Maritime Museum is going to show it in Freo. They should, as the ship's voyage ends in Fremantle harbour.
The whaler in Fremantle Harbour.

One interesting story was the capture and killing of an albatross. Yes, I know, sailors don't kill albatross as they bring bad luck. The story describes how the albatross was lured onto the deck of the ship, probably with fish. The albatross couldn't fly off the ship because it relied on water and its webbed feet to get airborne again. Trinkets were made from the claws and the beak.

Back in Sydney: the Pyrmont Bridge in Darling Harbour is a very nice example of an old (opened to traffic in 1902) swing bridge. The opening swung around to let ships through. I am unsure where the ships were going to as there is now nothing much beyond the bridge. I imagine that before infill, the water went much further upstream. The monorail service runs over the bridge, but I believe the swing span could still be opened.
The swing span showing the Monorail pylon just outside the swing span.
The lovely bridge controller's cabin

Inappropriate posts

A friend rang to day to tell me that when reading our blog posted from the Pacific Dawn, a blue notation told her that it was an inappropriate post. I read the post and even though I manage to offend some people with what I write and say there was nothing in the post to upset anyone.

Brother Graham works in an industrial area and nearby is a car dismantler (wrecker). He is Lebanese Australian and runs the messiest yard imaginable. Wrecked vehicles are on the verge and roadside and he is constantly being warned by the local Council to clean up his act. I bought a car from him for our son.....bad move! He and one of his countrymen have been charged with corruption. It seems that many of the wrecks he had bought had been examined and registered for the road by his mate in the vehicle inspection centre over the phone for a small fee of $10. The cops have played phone taps of conversations between the two on local TV stations.

Our house has a built in vacuum cleaning system. It is a Valet branded system and it works very well. Yesterday I investigated an air leak in one of the hose points and decided to change the rubber seal. The seal was held in place with a star fastener. I went to the agent only to find that they don't sell parts for this and I would have to buy the whole wall fitting @ about $90. No thanks and thanks for not keeping spares! Easy. I replaced the rubber seal but had broken the star fastening. Today I went to seven fastening specialists without any joy. Most didn't even know what a star fastener was. Hot glue is my friend! Here is a pic of a star fastener...
Star fasteners are used on kids' tricycle wheels and are usually domed.

As Dorothy said....

There is no place like home. We are very happy to be in familiar surroundings and not relying on the good grace of friends. Those friends were wonderful when we disembarked from the ship. Graham had timed his arrival well and we were soon on the way to his house in Sutherland. The following evening Graham had organised a get-together of friends who were all expatriate Australians stationed in Maprik in the Sepik District of Papua New Guinea in the 1970s. Plenty of memories there.

On Sunday as we recovered from the party, we were collected by Albert, a mate from the Gulf of Papua in the early 1960s. He showed off his very nice apartment on Sydney Harbour and Kathy, his wife, served us a nice lunch before we visited the Australian Museum to see an exhibition of photographs by the famous Australian photographer, Frank Hurley. There were many photos taken by Hurley in this 1920s expedition in places that I had worked near or visited. The expedition took two float planes to Papua...the first aircraft to be seen by the local population. One can only imagine what they made of these amazing, noisy, beings. Hurley was a bit of a villain at times, stealing artifacts from village long houses. I'm sure he gave out some beads to the locals.

Albert kindly dropped us off to Syney Airport and we departed Sydney at approximately 7.15pm.

I am 'down' with a very bad cold. Thinking back I seem to recall that I always return from a trip with a cold or flu. The ship was very aware of the possibility of spreading nasties to the passengers and we were all asked to use a disinfectant gel provided before going to food serveries.

Tomorrow I will drive up to Quinns Rocks to replace a tap washer at the rear of one of the units we are renting out. Even with the fuel involved in the 100km round trip it is far cheaper than getting a tap doctor in. Just have to take care not to break anything necessitating a major repair job.

Last day at sea

Yesterday (Thursday) Dorothy and Joan went along to the Art Auction again. Free bubbles were the major attraction – neither intended to bid on anything. They were hopeful there might be bottles up for grabs again. There weren’t, just glasses offered to the audience. I watched from the gallery above.

As most of our friends know, I am not an art aficionado. If it can’t be photographed it ain’t real.

The auction was selling originals and prints of sort of known artists for enormous prices. There weren’t a lot of buyers from the Aus. Yobbos. We know what is likely to be an investment and it isn’t some European sounding name who is flogging off prints of his/her mediocre ‘art’ at an inflated price.

Both of the girls know a bit about art and weren’t impressed either. Of the hundreds of pieces that were being flogged they identified about five that they liked – except for the prices, which they felt were far too high. But several pieces were sold to young couples.

There is a final auction today – the last day of the cruise. The only reason to attend will again be the free bubbles. Not much is free on this cruise.

We arrive in Sydney at 7 am tomorrow and start disembarkation at 8.30. They reckon they will have everyone off the ship by 10 am.

en route to Sydney

Rigelio our cabin steward

At breakfast this morning we were greeted by the usual ‘Hello Ma’am; hello Sir’ from every passing waiter. One pleasant waiter made the mistake of greeting a sad sack of a passenger close to our table and had to endure a 15 minute expose of the passenger’s life, his medical condition, dangerous foods and super-foods (Yoghurt is one if you want to write it down) and the main reasons why at the age of (possibly) 60 he has never married. The waiter was a very diplomatic young man. I bet there are a few laughs to be had back in the crew’s quarters.

The breakfast waiters are the same ones as in the main formal dining room which wound down at around 10.30pm last night. They would have had another 15-30 minutes final clean-up before they were able to hit the sack then on deck as it were for breakfast. After breakfast there is just half an hour before lunch starts then afternoon tea and the evening meal starting at 5.30pm. Not much time for the crew to relax.

Food service is almost continuous from 5.30am until 10pm and then if you aren’t full to the regurga-tube you can order room service 24 hours a day.

Last night I asked several waiters if they were going to re-sign after their contract ended. All three said they are going to….one having completed 14 X 10 month contracts with P&O.

When U.S. navy ships dock at Fremantle on R&R the local newspaper often tells us that supplies taken on board include ‘4 miles of sausages; sixty tonnes of ice cream’ etc etc. The Pacific Dawn has a small brochure about such statistics. For example the ship has two water production plants. One is an evaporative system producing 92,000 gallons a day and the other is a reverse osmosis plant producing 480 tons per day.
There are other statistics about disposal of poo etc, but I won’t go into that here. On food and beverage consumption daily a couple of figures show that on average 3.125 eggs are consumed; 487 bottles of wine and 1.284 cans/bottles of beer. Vegetables weigh in at 1,798kgs. The gross weight of the ship is not diminished by this consumption as it stays on board as adipose tissue and sewage.

Tuesday morning

We are sitting at anchor off the island Ouvea in New Caledonia. It apparently has the nicest beaches in the Loyalty Islands. It is approximately 35 kilometres long and has three villages on it.

The Captain made an announcement about an hour ago that the initial team (the ubiquitous photographers and others) went ashore and found the landing pontoon damaged by big seas. He said that he was dispatching an Executive Officer and a carpentry crew to see if repairs could be made for passengers to safely land on the island. The news came back that they deemed it unsafe for passengers and we are soon to up-anchor, drop off the pilot somewhere close to Noumea and head back; slowly to Sydney to use up the extra day.

Another bit of not-so-good news from the Captain was the fact that a cyclone is rapidly bearing down on us. We expect some rock-n-roll soon.

The Captain seemed very sorry that we couldn’t get ashore. I reckon that is probably because of the lost revenue in the obligatory photo session we endure at each landing.

Last night after the usual sumptuous meal in the Palm Court dining room we decided to take a look at the floor show. It was a stand-up comedian and he did a very good job. There were two exits from the International Show Room and we took the one that did not have the comedian and his DVD sales stand.

Tuesday PM

I went to the service desk to find out how the obligatory tipping toll of $7.50 per day, per passenger, is distributed as we want to give our cabin steward adequate reward for his good work. I was told that all the collected tips are allocated to the catering, cleaning and laundry staff. The administration and clerical crew don’t get a divvy of that amount.
The fellow on the desk then told me that 90% of passengers opt out of the tipping collection…..great; 10% of the mob are left to carry the burden and the staff get virtually B all! I think I will drop back our levy to the original $5. per day.

I asked our cabin steward about his working conditions and it seems that they all work 13 hours per day with no days off for 10 months straight. It is not a great deal for them, but must be a reasonable earner compared to wages in their own country. Most of the catering service crew are from the Philippines. Many of the cabin crew are Filipinas. They are largely handsome and pleasant people. I believe that Filipino overseas labour is the main Philippines export. I wish I could write music here to show you how their ‘Hello Ma’am’ goes.

I asked one of the bar staff if he was going to take a new contract when his finished. It seems that he/they can’t just sign up on the ship, they have to return to the Philippines and sign up again through a recruitment agent who takes a percentage of their contractual earnings. I guess it would be easier to earn some money on the side with a land-based job. On the ship, the only chance for extra income not being taxed by their agent would be to work hard for tips.

Vila, Vanuatu

This morning, Monday, we docked in Vila, Vanuatu. The harbour is very picturesque with a few islands in the entrance and small early morning ferries transporting people to the mainland. The passenger dock is very grotty compared to Noumea.

We were herded toward our tour departure point around 9am. The area was very hot with no shelter, mud and large potholes in the bus area. Everyone was pretty happy about boarding the airconditioned bus. First stop was a “cultural/art’ centre with a mismatch of fake and poorly made local artifacts. In the display were Easter Island repros, Sepik Totem poles from Papua New Guinea and some Balinese stone carvings. It impressed most of the tourists who had no idea of the origins of each piece.

Next stop the National Museum where we were given a talk on the Vanuatu numbering system and a demonstration of it in a sand tray. The rest of the exhibits were good, but lacked the artistic finish of Papua New Guinea’s art.

Outside the museum I tried my Tok Pisin (pidgin English) on our bus driver. We were both surprised that apart from a few words we understood each other well. We had previously been told by the tour guide that Missionaries did away with sorcery. The bus driver told me that that was not so, that in his village people could turn themselves into sharks to take another villager. Christianity 1; sorcery 1!

Vanuatu had a joint French/English administration up until 1980 when Vanuatu gained Independence . French and English is taught in school, but we heard nobody actually speaking French except our fellow tourists. Traffic drives on the right hand side of the road in Vanuatu. The issue of road rules was eventually settled in favour of the French because the first car in the Co-Dominium was owned by a French Priest.

Vila town is not too clean but there seems to be no graffiti or Raskol Gangs as in PNG. The people seem reasonably happy and surprisingly there is no betel nuts growing or chewed in Vanuatu. Big bonus there, as in PNG, red betel nut spit stains roads, footpaths and markets. Most of the roads in Vila have huge potholes. This may be because they have just had 5 weeks of heavy rain and no chance to do repairs. The heat and humidity is almost unbearable and we both wondered how we ever lived in coastal PNG. It was wonderful to get back to the ship with its excellent airconditioning.

We are departing Vila sometime after 6pm tonight and tomorrow we visit another sparsely populated island back in New Caledonia. After that visit, it is down hill to Sydney harbour.

Mystery Island, Vanuatu

Sunday. We are anchored near Mystery Island, a deserted island about 1.5 kilometres offshore from Anatom Island, a mountainous timbered island about 200 miles from Vila, Vanuatu.

The ship has lowered four tenders (lifeboats) and passengers can go ashore to swim, get melanomas and buy tacky trinkets from stalls set up by locals from the main island. A walk around the entire island takes 45 minutes and there is a reasonable airstrip still in use after U.S. forces left in 1945. Locals do not live on Mystery Island because ‘spirits’ turn up at night time. More likely because it looks like it is only a metre above sea level, so doesn’t have much in the way of arable land or fresh water.

In Noumea there are still long huts in use as accommodation which were part of a U.S. military hospital for casualties of the many South Pacific battles from Guadalcanal to Iwo Jima. They must have had good termite control to last this long. From 1942-45 there were over a million Yanks stationed or hospitalised in Noumea. On a hill overlooking the city are two large coastal guns installed by a contingent of Australian troops (Robin Force) as pre-war aid to the French. Say what?! I photographed the serial numbers of one of the guns in case I find someone interested in such artillery.
Coastal gun with graffiti and a mother trying to console a cranky kid.

Late news from cruise ship Pacific Dawn.
P&O has cleaned up its act after some very damaging publicity following the death of a female passenger in very grubby circumstances some 5 years ago. Yesterday the word getting around is that two passengers were kicked off the ship at Noumea and had to find their own way back to Sydney. Harsh treatment! The story is that they were busted taking a leak over the rail of the ship; probably into the wind and wetting a deck officer. ‘Keel-haul those men’!

Back to Sunday and Mystery Island: We went ashore and had a walk around part of the island. There was a small market of about 30 stalls all selling much the same stuff. Pandanus leaf baskets, fans, a bit of shell jewellery and some drinking coconuts. The water was beautiful and quite cool for the tropics. Snorkelling gear was for hire @ $40 for flippers, snorkel and mask. Thanks but no thanks!

We took a photo of the airstrip terminal building which is “under construction” and obviously has been for some time.

Back to the ship for lunch, we had to go through metal detectors and our hand gear was run through an X-ray machine. Mike has a device in his chest to adjust the electrodes into his brain. He had to go around the metal detector and undergo a very thorough body search with a hand held device. What they could possibly think anyone could bring on board from a small island way out in the Pacific I don’t know. Maybe some WW2 armaments?