MasterChef Australia

Since my friend Paul recommended the TV ‘reality’ show MasterChef we have watched a couple of episodes with interest. I am not into reality shows and the ones that I have looked at as I do the remote flip around the channels all seem to follow a similar formula. There is always a contestant who is selected to be the unlikeable. There are the unlikely winners and the pretty gals.

We enjoyed the show and will continue to watch it in its final week. Far less contrived is the ABC cooking show…..The Cook and the Chef .

In the last few days in Bali we watched an Australian woman have an Indonesian cooking lesson in the hotel. The actual lesson went for over an hour, which was preceded by an early morning escorted buying foray in a local fresh food market. She had a chef and about three assistants helping her through chicken and two fish saté; one white Tuna and one red Tuna and a side dish of Gado Gado. She learnt how to make the peanut sauce and to top it all off made coconut and palm-sugar pancakes.

It looked great and there was a huge amount of which the bulk was packaged up and given to Balinese friends in a beach market.

The cost of this extravaganza….
RP100,000 (about A12.50) for the lesson and around RP70,000 (about A$8.55) for all the ingredients.

Obviously a PR effort on the part of the hotel – that wouldn’t have paid the wages of the instructors.

ABC television Four Corners

On Monday evening the ABC program Four Corners did a hatchet job on Western Australia's St. John's Ambulance Service. Much of what Four Corners dredged up was valid criticism of the service. There were interviews with families of people who had died due to bungles in emergency calls and dispatching of ambulances. The almost one hour show finished up with a clip of a hearse at a funeral. They were a bit cheap and used a file clip of a hearse with a NSW number plate.

In today's newspaper there was a letter to the editor from a woman who told of her husband's painful terminal illness who wished that euthanasia was legal to stop such suffering. Once again Dr Phillip Nitshke, the euthanasia advocate was mentioned. The editor of the letters page added a photograph of Dr Nitshke with a nasty judgemental title. Judgement on this will depend on whether you are a 'Right to Lifer', but I personally think the editor is a rat.
Our National food, Vegemite, has taken a turn for the worst with the introduction of a Kraft engineered mutation. It is good old plain vegemite with cream cheese mixed in. Did not they remember when CocaCola tried to revamp the traditional coke? Dismal failure; as I predict this also will be. The bottle of the new 'stuff' comes without a name and there is a space for you to write in what you wish to call it. I have already done that on our jar.
Our friend John is getting a bit anti-social in his nursing home. His wife, Joy, has been told that he is getting a little aggresive with furniture etc. Eventually he will have to be medicated more to calm him down. The alternative is not viable or nice: restraining equipment.
Until you have family or friends in this situation, nursing homes are looked upon as the domain of evil nurse Ratchett from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. In actual fact the management of dementia patients is a complex and difficult task with weighty moral issues at stake. I have no solutions...that is the way it is. We hope that we can die at home still with all our marbles as did our parents, and if necessary with the help of someone like Dr Nitshke.

Michael Jackson

Well, the Michael Jackson thing is almost over...just a few more weeks of burials, autopsy reports and custody battles. I am not a Jackson fan, but I do remember some of his hits...not too bad, but not so good that he should be accorded God status. One thing is good about all this, his kids are seen without their faces covered. They don't look at all like Jackson and they certainly don't look mixed race. That being said, if he raised them, he is entitled to be called their father.

Cleaning up the computers I am preparing as give-aways, I have a not so good job of cleaning the keyboards. This means taking the keys off the boards and removing all the hair, biscuit crumbs and coffee stains and cleaning all the keys and the boards with alcohol. It takes some time and I need another keyboard alongside me to refit the keys in their correct places. When I was doing relief teaching I noticed that some of the bored students amused themselves by removing keyboard keys and replacing them in different spots. Most frustrating for two-finger typists!

I guess I can understand how computer operators can mess up a keyboard. When I am reading a book I usually tug away at my eyebrows and end up with pages of hairs needing a shake out. Personally, I am a clean nut and wouldn't think of eating and drinking over a keyboard.

Take a look at this baby with enough crumbs etc to feed half a dozen finches.

China's Urumqi

There are a few problems in China's North Western city of Urumqi. From what I can deduce, the minority Muslim population has been swamped by Han Chinese; somewhat similarly to Tibet. The Uighur Muslims have obviously seen the Tibetans get a bit aggressive and have followed suit. Next will probably be Muslim brotherhood support rallies in Middle Eastern and South East Asian countries. Is there another Crusade in the offing?

The Chinese government has done the Big Brother act, cutting off internet access to the province.

Another Big Brother act is being played out in a country just north of Aus. A fellow blogger who is a volunteer in that country had made some observations about recent anti-Asian riots there and was 'asked' to shut down his blog. I am unsure if that request was made by government or merely a very nationalistic national working at the ISP the blogger uses.

He hopes that it will blow over and he can get back to restoring his most interesting blog about a country I spent some ten years teaching in during its latter developing stages.

Yankee Invasion

I have been watching the AFL match between the eastern states bullies and our Dockers. Dockers??? Dockers is an American word for waterfront workers which was never used here. Wharfies was the term used here, but I guess that doesn't sound as good as Dockers.

There are around 6000 US Navy sailors in town on R&R. I think R&R means Root & Rehydrate.
I wonder what they make of Australian football if they are watching in a pub somewhere in Perth. No helmets, no padding just footy shorts and a jumper...and a mouth guard. Not like that sissy Gridiron!

I went for a drive around the suburb of Bicton this afternoon as they have a 'Bring out your dead' collection on this week. I was hoping to collect a few computers to salvage the RAM (memory sticks) for my Mac donation project. No luck! There are stereos, TVs, microwave ovens, furniture etc but not a single computer. I belong to an internet list called WAMUG.....the Macintosh User Group of W.A. so I put out a request for old RAM that would suit the machines I have. I had several replies with the prospect of getting about ten sticks of RAM of significant size. Thanks WAMUG. The RAM for the latest machines is relatively cheap, both new and secondhand, but the older stuff, PC133, is still very expensive.

Our daughter Helen is teaching full time at a school in the northern suburbs on a six month contract (two terms). She has just received a letter from Education Department staffing saying that she has been terminated and will have to apply for her own position again during the school holidays. Say what???? She has a contract for the two terms. No need to panic though as the Principal and Deputy Principal at the school also got terminated at the same time. They have assured her that they will sort it out. I wonder if they would have been as keen to help if they weren't in the same boat. The Education Department couldn't organise a pissup in a brewery! A couple of years ago a friend who teaches science in a city school got her first pay slip for the year informing her that she was a gardener at a school in the south of the state. It took about a month to sort that one out.

Warm Bali-cold Perth

We have been three days back from Bali...warm Bali! A friend in NSW once said that he was going to live in Tasmania so that he could truly experience the four seasons. He has since changed his mind. We couldn't live in a place that has a minus number in the temperature.

We gave blood today. We were supposed to give yesterday and forgot. It is not a bad experience and it gives a warm satisfying feeling as a donor.

Since we have been back, there have been several requests for computers and today I will get back on the job configuring machines to individual needs. The cold weather has a hibernating effect on me. The machines given to me by a printing establishment are quite fast and powerful. They are mainly eMacs @ 1.25ghz with 'superdrives'; CD/DVD read/write. I label them as I finish setting them up, but often don't trust myself and have to crank them up again to verify what I have actually loaded on them.

Enough ramblings for today!

Tuesday and Wednesday-Bali and Perth

We are in the Garuda departure lounge at Denpasar Airport. We got through Immigrasi and customs with no sweat, however the usual departure tax had been hiked up to RP150,000 and Joan had done her efficient calculations of what Rupiah we needed based on RP130,000. We had to go back and change a few bucks at an airport rate to get the correct amount to present to the unsmiling.

Sitting in the lounge I reflected on a couple of things about our visit…….

Yesterday whilst having a foot massage on the beach we were enjoying the balmy breeze at about 26c whilst the locals mostly wore sweaters and jackets and complained about the cold.

Bali is a place where nobody looks askance at me piling chilli sauce on my breakfast.



When Joan was packing to leave this morning she noticed that a small umbrella which was in an unlocked pocket of our main case had disappeared…..baggage handlers.

When we arrived at Denpasar airport from Australia we were second off the aircraft but waited at the baggage carousel until everyone had collected theirs and figured that ours went to Singapore or some other destination. I was about to do a Rumple Stiltskin and stomp through the floor, when a bloke yelled out..’Mr Lock?’ The bastard had grabbed our bag and put it on his trolley and was expecting us to be happy about him trying to scam us. I grabbed the bag without comment.

In the airport there are probably a hundred stores selling everything imaginable. There are at least a half dozen watch stalls selling expensive watches. I mean, who would believe that the watch you bought in Bali was a real one! We bought a bottle of Vodka for daughter Helen because it was much cheaper than the duty free stores at Perth Airport.
We did notice that Australian wine which sells for around A$13 RRP was selling for US$28. Nice mark up!

Wednesday:

Helen collected us and we came home to a cold house. I went and bought fish and chips and that went down very nicely.

This morning’s newspaper had a front page story about a Garuda plane coming into Perth, trying to land on a runway which was under repair (twice). The pilots didn’t read their airport briefing properly and had to go around twice until they were talked down. I am not surprised that some pilots have problems with English. When our man talked to us on the plane we could hardly understand what he was saying.

Last full day in Bali

This is our last full day before we return to Perth tomorrow. We have had a good time, but it is time to eat some regular Aussie food.
Though the omelettes at brekky are really good

This morning I found Wally outside the hotel and confirmed our booking for 9am tomorrow to get us to Denpassar airport. Wal reckoned we could leave later, but his old van could break down and we want to be in the Garuda Executive lounge with plenty of time to spare and no stress.

I used the hotel WiFi to download Skype, set it up and we deposited A$16.00 into our account so that we could use SkypeOut which allows calls to landlines. We called daughter Helen in Aus. And talked for at least five minutes for a grand total of $0.25. The reception was great and Helen decided to download Skype so that she can talk to us for free on the computer…must save every 25c we can in these times.

Last night we walked up to a small restaurant and had a cheap and reasonable meal. I had beef Rendang which was a bit disappointing. The beef was from an old pensioned off water buffalo and the accompanying vegetables were steamed. Most of the other vegetables we have had have been either crispy fresh or pickled.

Joan had Lumpia which although tasty was deep fried to a crisp. Mostly the food has been excellent. No rabid dog or monkey, Paul.

The owner of the restaurant, Kalamantan, is a Yank who has owned the place for the last 20 years. It is reminiscent of Ricks Gin Joint and the regulars were right out of Casablanca. Its reputation draws oddball characters, which isn’t all that bad.

This morning after breakfast I took a few snaps of the things that are very familiar to us, but probably not so to people who have not been here before. Are there any Australians who have not been here before??? I shot the gamelan players who play the repetitious trance inducing sounds of Indonesia, a rest house in the gardens and some outrigger canoes. Sorry no audio for the Gamelans.

On previous visits to Bali we have stayed at the Grya Santrian Hotel, also on the Sanur beachfront. This hotel, the Segara Village Hotel (free plug here) is a far more friendly place with much better free facilities for the guests. There is a tennis court, two pools, the Jacuzzi bar which is sort of a pool, table tennis, chess and billiards. Also there are lots of quiet places to sit or sleep in the breeze.

We have noticed that when we greet other guests the ones who respond with any enthusiasm. are mostly Australians or Americans. The Europeans, who seem to be mostly German, are a bit reserved and usually gather together on their world-dominating table.

That’s a bit harsh Kev.


Update: Joan and I had both had a long foot massage for $5 plus a small tip. Not too bad at all!
After the massage I had a haircut at a nice salon on the beach for an extortionate fee of just under $5. Which included the eyebrows, ears and a hair wash. She promised to make me handsome…the cut is OK but the promise unfulfilled.

Of coconuts and Haus Winds

Our hotel room

Today we have been relaxing, reading and having a couple of drinks. Joan did venture down to the beach markets and bought two sarongs; one silk and one cotton, both Batik printed.

I took the laptop over to the ‘meeting place’ which is a beautiful Balinese ‘house wind’. I used the free WiFi to download Skype and we will call Helen using Skype on the computer this evening.

Later I took a few photos of the structure, but felt intimidated by some unfriendly Europeans there.

Wish we could get something as beautiful back home.

Sitting out on our balcony we saw a sudden gathering of grounds-people near a coconut palm. A young fellow quickly climbed the palm and sent down a dozen or so small coconuts for the assembled mob. Whilst he was up the palm, eyes were ever watchful for the administration. In no time at all there was no evidence of what had taken place and the remaining nuts were skilfully arranged to look like nothing had been taken. I was tempted to yell out ‘Security is coming’ to see how they would react.

Our neighbours left to return to Sydney town this morning. They offered us a half bottle of Scotch and I am loathe to admit that we didn’t take them up on their offer as we already have two half bottles of spirits to get rid of before Tuesday when we also leave. The last time we were here we tried to leave with a half bottle of vodka and customs confiscated it on the grounds that “Must be full bottle; cannot be half bottle’. Thieves!

The neighbours were a little concerned at possible delays checking in at Denpasar Airport as there is a very large contingent of Christians and their families leaving today after their annual jamboree or whatever a gathering of happy Christians is called – perhaps a crusade? It is rumoured that they number around 600 and that they return to the Bali Beach Hotel annually because they some years ago discovered the Bali Beach’s cheesecake.

yesterday's outing; Bali Bird Park

Wally drove us to the Bali Bird and Reptile Park yesterday. It is about 20-30 minutes drive away from the hotel. We were impressed; very lovely set-up with a wide variety of birds and reptiles. During the main bird show which featured about six or so impressive large birds flying to set stations and handlers, a Sulphur Crested Cockatoo stole the show by hanging upside down, wildly flapping its wings and screeching like a mad thing. A typical Aussie on holiday!

Most of the birds were in large cages, but many were free to walk and fly around. There was one pretty sad Kookaburra in a cage without a mate. I was photographing a cranky looking Ibis and it quickly did a walk around me and had a go at my backside, luckily fended off with a growl and hand wave.

Wally delivered us back to the hotel and we have his card and will probably use him to get us to the airport next Tuesday morning. We are still amazed at the complete calmness shown by drivers and riders in the mess that is Bali traffic. There is absolutely no road rage! Drivers use their horn for a variety of signals…’I am overtaking’, ‘look out I am coming through’, ‘please don’t try and turn in front of me’ and ‘hello pretty girls’.
In all our times here we have not seen one scrape or accident which is truly amazing as cars, trucks, vans and motorcycles weave around either side of slow traffic and through intersections. Motorycles can carry a rider and up to three or even four passengers. The rider has priority on the helmet, mum and kids travel bare headed.

That evening, relaxing on our balcony, we struck up a conversation with our neighbours. They are ‘we’ve been everywhere and done everything’ people from Sydney. We had a Six Degrees of Separation moment when she told us that she had been on Sale Of The Century years ago. I mentioned that we have a friend/colleague who was also on Sale and lost two BMWs and a truck load of cash on the last night. The lady next door/balcony said that she was beaten by a young fellow name Peter who was also up for the same prizes. It turns out that it was the same Peter…Peter Harmsworth we know. Amazing!

We have the DVDs, the watches and new shoes, so we don’t think we are going to enhance the economy of Bali much over the next three days…just food and drink, Wally’s fare and the departure tax.

Bali day four continued

Wally gave us a good price so we made our trip to Hardy’s with him. He waited while we visited a few other places, including an internet café where we uploaded the blog. Then to Hardy’s for beer and nibbles. We also bought some fruit and milk – we both dislike the powdered coffee creamer. Back with a box of groceries – no eyebrows raised as we breezed in past Reception.

We decided to eat in the hotel restaurant. Very nice: Kare Ayam and Ikan Sambal (chicken curry and spiced fish and coconut). Came back to our room, replete. Then a drama ensued.

The room key wouldn’t work, just turned round and round in the lock. Off to Reception. Security guy comes with a master key and suggests we had made some error. He tries the master key – same result. The lock is cactus. We had also barred the door to the balcony (we are upstairs). However he proved to be resourceful. There was an empty room two doors along. He opened it with the master, then clambered over the ledges and balconies between rooms, past an occupied room, to get to our balcony. After a fair bit of pushing and banging, he gained entry and opened the door from the inside. We wonder if the people next door (who we think are Russian) phoned Reception about a break-in or just decided it was wise to take no notice.

So now we can get out, but not in. We were offered the empty room, but thought it was too much of a hassle to gather everything up and move. Tomorrow we will take it in turns to have breakfast. They have promised the maintenance men will be here by 8.30am. Wally is taking us to the Bird Park tomorrow at 9. Maybe he will have to wait for us this time.

Bali Day 4

Yesterday when we were in Kuta we tried to escape the hard sell on the streets by jumping into the main department store Matahari. Just inside the entrance some enterprising bloke(s) had set up some low plastic tanks with surrounding seat for tourists to pay RP 100,000 (A$12.50) to dangle their legs in the water and have small fish (Gambusia) nibble at loose skin and hair. There was a waiting line for 20 minutes of what we used to do in our fish pond back home. I didn’t read the spiel, but it probably trumpeted health benefits.

We didn’t feel much like a major Indonesian meal last night so ventured out to a beachside restaurant and ordered a club sandwich. The only saving grace to this meal was the complimentary tomato soup….we couldn’t finish eating the sandwich.

We were about to take a walk along the beach and fend off sellers of all kinds of stuff and massage, pedicure and manicure ladies waiting like birds of prey along the route. The alternative is to walk inland a bit along a roadway with dozens of car drivers trying to take you somewhere either now, tomorrow or the rest of the holiday. The footpaths are much better than when we were here last, but there are still unexpected gaps and drops.

Many years ago our son fell into an open sewer hole, just managing to save himself by extending his elbows. As I desperately extricated him from a very smelly landing a bloke selling silver jewellery was tugging at my sleeve, suggesting I buy from him. I didn’t!

We decided to go to Hardy's by cab to buy some shampoo and beer. Waiting outside was Wally, the guy we had booked yesterday, but who didn't turn up. His friends told us that his car was broken down etc etc. When we told Wally that his mates had given us a load of BS he just laughed inferring that he would have done the same to them. I could see that situation turning a bit nasty in Australia!

Bali Day 3

This morning at 7am all the pool lounges were tagged by personal possessions. One featured a Lufhansa beach ball. The same ball was still there at 2.30pm...enough said!

I don’t normally read when there are other distractions like TV. But in Bali TV is 2/10 and yesterday I read the latest Tim Winton book, ‘Breath’.

I am a Tim Winton fan and his books
have always just felt right. It is probably because he is a Western
Australian and I know the places he talks about and I have known most of the characters.

One of his best, I think, was ‘Cloudstreet’ set in suburban Perth in the late 1940s. Sometimes I think he is a fan of another similar writer Tom Hungerford who is now in his nineties. Tom; and I feel I can call him Tom because he was a childhood friend of my mother, writes with a suburban feel in his anthology of short stories named ‘Stories from Suburban Road’. It is very similar in some ways to Winton’s ‘Cloudstreet’. I suspect Winton is a Hungerford reader!

Hungerford wrote two novels in the 1950s, one dealing with his wartime experiences in New Guinea. It is a great read, but only published in Australia, it entered a quite small market. It might well be that had he published ‘The Ridge and the River’ in the 70s, people would have been prepared to look at war as a topic again?

Anyway, back to ‘Breath’. The first third of the book built the strong characters of the story and the last third a successful denouement.
The middle section of the book appeals to surfers and left me a little frustrated that I had to wade through so much to get the guts of the story.

Nevertheless I would love to be
able to write like both authors, just like I would love to be able to play guitar like Tommy Emmanuel…..it ain’t gonna happen!.

When we went out to the front of the hotel to meet with Wally, our booked taxi man, he wasn’t there. Kev had the once in a lifetime opportunity to ask “Where’s Wally?”, but nobody got the joke. Wally didn’t turn up on time and other drivers gave us various reasons why he didn’t and why we should take their cab. ‘His radiator has broken’, ‘He is sick’ were a couple. We gave Wal about 15 extra minutes and then we took another bloke.

Kuta is a very busy place and is teeming with scammers. We’ve seen the scam before. A scratch card is given ‘Free’ and every one is a winner. All you have to do to collect your free dinner prize is attend a dinner party where the timeshare spiel is given. No thanks!

Another annoying thing about large stores in Bali is that most, if not all, the staff is on commission and when escaping the street spruikers by dashing into a department store you find a new lot working in the store trying very hard to sell their wares.

Day 2 BALI

Our first day in Bali was quiet. We had a late lunch then in the evening, went out along the beach to a restaurant named the Bonsai. Joan had a mixed sate and I had traditional Nasi Goreng. Very nice food and a pleasant atmosphere on the beach. It cost us less than $20A which included two large bottles of Bintang. Bintang is 5% alcohol, but it must creep up on you as I don't feel it like I would a beer back in AU.


This morning we had breakfast in the hotel restaurant and later around 10am grabbed a 'taxi' driven by Wally. He took us to Harvey's, a department store and waited until we had done our shop and brought us back to the hotel for RP60,000. That sounds a bit frightening, but each A$ can be exchanged for RP8,200. Tomorrow he is booked to take us into Kuta for a bit of shopping and he will collect us at about 3pm.

At Harvey's we bought real toilet paper. The stuff in the hotel could be broken by a young mosquito! Same goes for the soap; they supply us with the smallest cakes imaginable. We bought a real sized cake of soap. Joan 's packing skills had failed her and she had to buy a hat. Of course we did stock up on mixers and snacks.

The hotel room is quite nice but as with most buildings here the finish is not tradesman-like as we would know it in Aus. There is some dodgy plumbing and tiling and repairs done look like someone has sent his 13 year old son to do the job. Still, it is comfortable; the airconditioning works well and we have free WiFi in the room to write the blog and send and receive emails.

The grounds of this hotel are magnificent. Water seems plentiful and all the paths are washed down continuously. There seems to be dozens of grounds people busying themselves all over the place. One of the pools is the spa bar where the bar staff are inside a 'pocket' inside the pool. Very smart!
Jacuzzi Bar
Beachside Pool

My friend Paul has a bit of a thing about big things...bananas, sheep, quokkas etc, so I have included a pic of the big lobster on the beach.

Bali Hai

Well, we are in Bali and settling into our hotel room. The flight up with Garuda was in a Boeing 737-800 and I was happy to be flying in an aircraft made by Boeing. They’ve been in the business for a very long time and Airbus have had a few rough flights of late…one so rough that the plane seemingly fell apart.

It was a pretty smooth flight even though the skipper told us that there was a westerly cross-wind of around 100 mph. There were a few interlopers trying use the toilet in business and the cabin crew soon told them where they should go….up the back of the plane! The cheek of them!

We cruised through customs in no time and secured a taxi from a company in the airport. A couple of hangers-on grabbed our bags and walked with us to the parked cab about a hundred meters away. They demanded a $6 tip to share, but Joan gave them a $2 gold coin each. It was still money for jam!

We were too early to check in to our room so we had a drink and a meal. The meal was very nice ….Cap Chay; a rice, prawn and chicken dish with crispy vegetables and a delicious sauce. RP 50,000 each which is about A$6.00.

The hotel, The Segara Village Hotel in Sanur is very nice with three large pools. There are notices up saying that lounges near the pools should not be held by absent swimmers by placing personal items on them. All the lounges had stuff on them and only 6 or 8 people were either swimming or sunbaking.

Gastric upset

Our friend John has once again flown the coup from his nursing home. He was found walking down the middle of a busy road and some one called an ambulance and he was taken to Fremantle Hospital where a comedy of errors took place and he was, after some four hours, released into family care and returned to the nursing home.

His nursing home is in a lock-down situation due to an outbreak of a gastric bug. I was on my way to visit him and cut his hair when Joy, his wife, told me about it and I am thankful that I am not about to land in Bali tomorrow with a dose of the poos!

Brother Graham is collecting us tomorrow morning early and driving us to the airport at 4.30am. I apologised for the early call out and he replied that it is no different than coming home from a night club at that time....but sober.

Graham's 60th birthday bash went off well with about 60 guests at his house. I was just a little concerned that we might have some party gate-crashers, but looking around at at some of the older guests I figured that any crashers would have a rough time dealing with his guests. The party did finish up at 4am with two hangers-on. I went to his place to assist with the clean up. The usual half empty bottles of beer were found in various strange places around the house. His rubbish bin was collected today and it would have made a noise like a multiple car crash when dumped into the truck.

Next posting will be from Bali where the temperatures range from a low 24c to 30+c. We are going to hate leaving cold Perth for 8 days.

Nursing homes

We have my sister staying with us for a week. She is ostensibly here for our brother's 60th birthday party this Saturday, but also is on a major shopping mission. Having a sibling as a house guest is, I think, not as easy as having a friend stay.

This morning I was searching through our pantry for some coffee beans. I know Joan had bought some recently... eventually I found them down next to the packets of different sugars and coffee bottles. Obvious?? Well, not for me! I suggested that Joan make a mud map of the pantry for me in case she goes before me. 'Go look for it' she offered. Both of us hope that we will spend the rest of our lives looking for things in our own house rather than ending up in a nursing home.

Our friend John is in a nursing home and visiting him is often sad. Joy, his wife, visits every second day and I feel a little guilty that I only visit occasionally to give him a haircut. John is losing weight, but otherwise is quite healthy and looks like he is going to be around for some time yet. I have a theory that once dementia sets in, people usually live longer. They seem to have fewer worries. In John's case this theory doesn't hold up. He is often worried about things and these worries are the major subject of the conversations we have.

We are off to Bali early Tuesday morning. Brother Graham is taking us to the Perth International Airport and then heading off to work. Daughter Helen can collect us when we return to Perth. On Monday morning I will drop of sister Shirley at the domestic airport for her flight back to Esperance.

Yesterday we went to Joy's 70th birthday party. There were about 70 people attending also. A very nice day!

Earlier in the day I collected some 20 computers from a publishing house in East Perth. The company decided that I could place them with needy people rather than trying to dispose of them themselves. In typical office use of computers there is a lot of sticky tape and post-it notes on the cases which will have to be cleaned off before I can feel good about working on them.
I have placed quite a few computers with educational games loaded on board with aboriginal families and have had very good feedback. A lady collected a couple more machines today and has requested quite a few more. I know that they are mostly going to relatives and that is fine with me. At least the lady distributing them to rellies is Mac literate and can help out if her family needs backup.

On a local news feed 'WA Today' there was a report about the police and pollies bringing in a grog ban in the north west of the state. Attached to the article was an advert for grog!
I do not know how police or indeed government can legally ban a product to a selected group of Australian citizens?

And lastly a death notice in the local paper. Slobodan Milosevic is not the bloke mentioned, but he is a despot!

Lockie the loser

After attending the Alternative Energy show recently we waited patiently for a rep. from the solar energy company to come visit and sign us up for some solar panels before the federal government's cutoff date for the solar energy subsidy which was to end on the 30th of June. Then yesterday news broke that the federal government did a bit of a panic about what that subsidy was costing the nation and suddenly gave it the chop with about two hours' notice yesterday. No free electricity for the Locks!

The state government has also dumped its water subsidy which gave cash back on purchases of water saving devices and wetting agents. This subsidy covered a range of items from 'wetta soil' to household items like water-saving shower heads to water tanks.....all gone!

Today on talk-back radio (ABC of course) a caller asked why the government still allows the sale of water guzzling washing machines and dishwashers when there are machines on sale which do use water wisely. I guess that argument could also be used about gas guzzling vehicles?

Sport

The main weekend sporting did not favor us in the West. Both footy teams lost to the Eastern States bullies. Each team in the AFL has coaches, assistant coaches and coach-coaches, medicos, a psychologist and of course the management team. The main thing they are missing is a choir master to tune them up before they belt out the club anthem in the change rooms. A National Disgrace!

Also on sport one of Australia's star cricketers has been dumped and sent straight home because he is a pisspot and gets stuck into the booze. His story is in all the newspapers of the nation and some people are arguing we should let him stay with the team...win at any cost!

Meantime whilst Australia reels in the wake of this sacking, thousands of people throughout our world have been starved to death, murdered and indiscriminately slaughtered. If I were a conspiracy theorist (and I'm not) I could put forward the theory the governments all around the world spend vast sums of money to support sports and sporting facilities just to placate the masses and keep them happy. A happy mob doesn't bitch too much about the economy!

Another little bitch about sport is the stupid waste of perfectly good champagne which seems to be showered over the winners at motoring events. Let them use soda water!

Advice for the elderly: Don't wear black when you have dandruff.

Segara Village Hotel, Bali

We are all booked for our Bali trip on 23rd June. That is just two days after brother Graham's 60th Birthday party. Hope the head has cleared up by departure time.

We are staying at a fairly up-market hotel on the beach at Sanur. It has free wi-fi and lots of other services. We hope that it is not the high season for European visitors known internationally as Towel Placers, due to their habit of reserving a deck chair at the pool(s) by placing a towel on it for the whole day even if they have gone shopping etc. That doesn't really worry us as we don't have the bodies to show off around the pool.....not that that worries Dutch and German oldies.

The news about an Air France plane crashing is not good news when we will be flying on the same aircraft operated by SE Asia's own dodgy airline. We are flying Business Class so that should make us a bit safer than those in Cattle Class...shouldn't it??

This weekend there is an IT disposal throughout the metro area of Perth and Fremantle. It is sponsored by Apple Computer and not restricted to Apple products. I have quite a few monitors, printers, scanners etc to go. Recently I was given a couple of Apple 20" CRT monitors and they are huge and heavy! This morning I was offered a few more 24" monitors and had to decline as they are very hard to place. Not only hard to place, but hard to carry!

A friend Joy called asking for advice about finding lost data on her computer. She is writing a sort of Bio and after typing up the latest chapter, pressed a key and all is gone. I visited this morning and looked in all the regular places without luck. I have download a demo version of Data Rescue and will return to see what it can find. The Demo gives you one shot at finding a file.

Sustainable Energy Expo

Yesterday we decided to train into Perth to visit the Sustainable Energy Expo. We drove to the train station and got the free trip for oldies. We left from the Murdoch station and it is about a ten minute fast trip into the city centre. One thing I hadn't noticed before is the smart escalator. If no one is riding it it slows right down but if a passenger get on board it speeds up. Maybe I need to get out more!

The so called Sustainable Energy Expo was a bit of a swizz. There were a number of booths selling solar power roof units, but mostly it was the Royal Show type of booth exhibition and selling all manner of household products, including steam cleaners, vacuums, spas etc etc. We did glean quite a bit of information about solar power units and a representative of one of the companies is to visit us this week to look at our needs and household set-up. We think we will end up purchasing before the state government subsidy is terminated at the end of June. After the subsidy of $8,000, the cost to us is about $2450.

We had lunch in Perth city and as we seldom visit the city were surprised at the crowds there. Perth and Fremantle have seven days trading. There didn't seem to be as much trading as parading!

On the train home there was a young bloke coiffured and dressed and to stand out, taking up a priority seat. He was encouraged to stand for us and proceeded to sketch nothing in a sketchpad and then read a picture novel from the back page forward. When a spare seat became available he grabbed it putting his feet on the seat and taking up both seats. Needed a good slapping!

Today has been a computer fixing day. A friend who is a Mac Guru had damaged the power input to a hard drive, so I visited with my soldering iron (which is not made of iron!) and re-soldered the broken joints. Next, a friend had a spam attack telling him that a scan of his PC hard drive had found 164 virus attacks and a dozen or so worms in various places on his Windows something directory. Trouble is he is running a Mac and I believe the message is a trap to get young players to purchase their anti viral software. In this case old players!
The message is set up so that the computer operator cannot just delete the warning message. It hangs around like a bad smell until (in Firefox) under the Tools header you delete personal data including cache etc. Lastly my brother Graham had a bit of trouble scanning a document on his new Canon all-in-one printer. I visited and ran through the process with him. Whilst there he gave me a little job; to make an invitation to his 60th birthday in the form of a Summons to Appear.

Swine Flu positive result

Our friends Sean, Denise and their kids have received notice that they are positive to the Swine Flu.

'NSW Health finally came back with our results and we are positive H1N1. We will be in quarantine until at least 1 June. Other than that; we are doing fine and life goes on, albeit in a smaller space than we would prefer.'

The are confined to their luxury caravan for a short time. Hope the kids don't go Stir Crazy.
The only commiseration I could offer was that when they get over this mild form of Swine Flu they will probably have anti-bodies which will make them more immune from any further variants.

Sean is an ex student of mine from around 1982 at Rockingham Senior High School. We have kept in touch through the years and stayed over in each others house on each side of the country. They recently sold their house and had a caravan custom made for their round Australia odyssey. The cruise on the Pacific Dawn was an aside; one they will remember for a long time.

We did a cruise to the same Pacific Island ports on the Pacific Dawn last year. Even then passengers were obliged to use provided antiseptic hand gel at dining stations. There have been stories going around for years about deadly diseases spread by handrails on the many staircases on board. We didn't concern ourselves too much at the time, but I reckon right now some folks would be wearing gloves.

Booked for Bali

Joan has done all the on-line booking and payment for our Bali trip next month. We are flying with Garuda, the national airline of Indonesia. Garuda doesn't have a great record when it comes to landing on airstrips. They sometimes tend to land on the bits that don't have any tarmac. We have flown with Garuda a few times and I am hoping that their international flight aircraft are serviced better that domestic ones and that their pilots are more experienced than the internal airlines. We thought of flying Qantas, but Garuda does Business return, Perth to Bali for $1310 and Qantas wants $8,024.34 for the same flight. I just hope Garuda maintenance has nailed the wings on with good strong nails. We are booked into a very smart beachside hotel in Sanur for the seven days.

On another flight this week a young family brought Swine Flu to Western Australia. The family of ten...a young couple (the husband is 30), his wife and their 8 children have unwittingly put the entire passenger complement into home isolation until everyone can be tested. The newshounds have gathered outside the home of the infected family which has made the wife a bit cranky and she apparently spat at photographers through a slot in her hijab. A local football team was also on the same flight and players, trainers etc returning from a drubbing in the eastern states is also under scrutiny. I don't suppose they will be required to stay home.

We had a similar experience when we returned to W.A. from six years in Papua New Guinea in 1975. Our son Martin contracted typhoid somewhere, and we were isolated from family and friends for about a month until he got the all clear. We too were hounded regularly for updates on our condition.

Friends of ours; Sean, Denise and their two kids have just returned from a South Pacific cruise and they too are caught up in the Swine Flu epidemic. There was an outbreak of the flu on the ship and all the passengers, some 2000, are required to remain in home isolation with anti-viral drugs for a week. They seem quite happy as they are still smiling from their big adventure.

A cool wedding

Geoff and Bea were married on the bank of the Swan River near Blackwall Reach. It didn't rain, but it was cold. Bea has recently come to Australia from Canada so she thought the weather was just fine. The celebrant was a Bronwyn Bishop lookalike and gave them their money's worth with a long ceremony. I took the photos and I can attest that it was brass monkey weather.
My brother Graham; Geoff and Bea and Graham's partner Faye being ministered to by 'Bronwyn Bishop',

This morning I went to our son's unit to do a bit of maintenance. We installed a new rangehood and surprisingly it went together with ease and it looks very nice. Next we changed some tap washers and replaced a rubber seal in the toilet cistern. Finally I filled a small area of burnt formica on the laundry benchtop with plastic car bog and smoothed it off. Martin, our son, says that a cigarette lighter was faulty and it caught on fire...Oh yea! We also measured up the floor space where there is crappy linoleum. That will be replaced with better quality linoleum soon. Pity we can't claim repairs against taxation as we are virtually giving Martin free rent.

Amy has passed on

Amy Sweetman has died. She was 91 and had lost most of her thinking ability. Amy put up with a fair bit of Kev as a teenage neighbour...noisy cars and motorbikes and of course a one-year outdoor trumpet practice. I liked her and the family. Gail, a daughter, was a very comely gal who became an Air Hostess and died in a major aircrash in the north of the state.

Brother Graham and I will attend her funeral as they have done the same for our family losses.

I have a couple of photography jobs tomorrow; one of which is a wedding. This is a strange wedding which has only four participants.....the happy couple and my brother and his friend as witnesses. The ceremony is to take place on the banks of the Swan River and I hope the weather holds off for at least the time frame of wedding and pics. It is not a biggy as there are only six people involved...me, the bride and groom, my brother and partner as witnesses and the celebrant.

Not too many worries about this wedding. Some of the weddings I have photographed in the past have been quite stressful. Imagine if you will, a large Italian wedding where you stuff up the camera settings and have to leave the country before the aggrieved family puts out a contract on you.

There is always someone worse than you

Today I went to our son's place....it's actually our place that we rent to him on a non taxable, almost none-income basis. I hired a carpet cleaner and took a new set of tap furniture to replace taps in the kitchen. His carpets were like the floor of a cocky's cage but they came up pretty well. The new taps look pretty smart but they stand out like a toilet in a desert compared to the rest of the kitchen.

We have to replace the range hood in his (our) kitchen. It is not an exhaust system merely a recirculating one which will require much more cleaning. We thought we would be up for quite a few dollars, but we found that $80 bought us a smart looking replacement unit. Will Martin regularly clean it? We live in hope.

I left Martin cleaning the carpets whilst I went to buy him some food and household supplies. The shopping centre is named the Kwinana Hub and ever you are feeling a bit down or think that you are not a fashionista you should take a trip to Kwinana and spend some time amongst the folks at the Kwinana Hub. I guarantee you will feel much better after seeing how the other half look. Tattoo town!

We have been thinking about getting a solar electric generating unit. With the government subsidy of $8,000 dollars, a 1 kilowatt unit installed would cost about $2,450 and feed back surplus energy into the grid. If we were grey nomads and went on regular caravan trips like my cousin, we could be getting payment cheques from Western Power on a regular basis. The only trouble with setting it up on our roof is that the the North facing roof is at the front of the house and we don't really want to spoil the look of the roof with a large glass box. There might be enough room on the garage roof which faces in a north easterly direction. Got to make a decision soon as the economic downturn has caused the government to discontinue the subsidy in June.

A weekend of losses

There were a few losses this weekend. Both W.A. footy teams lost to those brutish eastern states teams...Boo!

Then there was a loss for the Australian Labor Party in the Fremantle by-election. The Greens won that one ending Labor's 85 year strangle-hold on the seat. The demographics of Fremantle has slowly been changing from a workers' town to a Latte sipping mob with the odd hippy dreadlocker thrown in.

Lastly the referendum on daylight saving was lost to the no vote. My goodness there are already gloating letters of the naysayers hitting the paper. My brother Graham has a friend who was ready to slash his wrists if the Yes vote won out. Bro commissioned me to make up a label for a bottle of Sunlight dishwashing liquid to give to his mate.
Click on the image to enlarge.

This morning we were casually going about our morning activities when the doorbell heralded the surprise arrival of my cousin, his wife and another couple we spent time in Bali with some years ago. It shouldn't have been a surprise as I had arranged the day and time for the visit last week. Duh!!
Fortunately we had some cake and plenty of tea bags and we were forgiven and a pleasant morning ensued.

The referendum on Daylight Saving

We have just returned from voting. There are two polls on at the moment…the election of the member for Fremantle and the Daylight Saving referendum. We are not in the Fremantle electorate so only had to do the Daylight Saving vote. We both voted for it by placing a YES in the space. As we left I thought it would have been interesting if we were given a preferential vote on that ticket.?? No, but yes is my second choice.

Last night Joan and her sister Dorothy went to the opening of the Cockburn City’s ‘Showoff 5’ exhibition. Joan has three pieces in the exhibition. Showoff is in the refurbished Community Hall on Rockingham Road.

In the last few days I have received offers of 15+ computers for my give away project. They are eMacs and all in good order. They come from an advertising/publishing house and have plenty of RAM (memory) and very nice inbuilt speakers. I am trying to get our son interested in helping me so that he is not just idling the day away on his own. We’ll see!?

When our daughter Helen was studying at university she worked part time at an optical laboratory. I was able to get new glasses fitted to my old frames for either nothing or a carton of beer. Helen no longer has contacts there and so I need to get new glasses from an optical dispenser. TV adverts about a ‘cheap’ deal for glasses led me to SpecSavers.
Glasses aren’t cheap anymore. To get new multi-focal lenses fitted to my old frame costs around $350 for the lenses and an extra $99 for Reglazing. I thought reglazing only applied to windows!

It might be a good deal to have a week in Bali, get new glasses, a dentist to work on what teeth I have left, buy a few copy watches and DVDs and relax in the hotel and do a few tours. Mid year is around the coolest months for Bali. Don’t know how we lived in Papua New Guinea with all that tropical humidity without going ‘Troppo’.

Mothers' Day

Our daughter Helen treated us to lunch for Mothers Day. We went to an Italian restaurant in Fremantle named Sandrinis. Good food and service. Helen's boyfriend accompanied us and I must say he is an easy going likeable bloke. I didn't realise how popular Fremantle is on a weekend. The place was packed out!

The origin of Mothers Day is not new. This link takes you to the Writers Almanac and if you use the 'Listen' button you can hear the text read by Garrison Keillor. We are subscribed to the Writers Almanac and get a daily dose of poetry and history.

When we returned home from the Mothers Day lunch we opened a bottle of bubbly and (I) settled down to watch the footy. Not a bad match with a little bit of Biffo to keep things interesting. The right team won! Later I decided to try a recipe using Angel Wing pearl meat. We had read about this 'new' shellfish and thought that it was about time the flesh of pearl shell should be used as food. Wrong! The pearl shell has a muscle to open and close the shell, but it also has a huge amount of guts in there. Foul....don't bother with it.

Helen had a search out in our store room for a book on Chickens for her pre-school class. She found it and the book had some nice illustrations of roosters.
Made me think of the little ditty by Ogden Nash 1902-1971....... The Rooster is a boisterous hoodlum, His battle cry is Cock-a-doodlum, Hands in pocket, cap over eye, He whistles at pullets passing by.

I suggested to Helen that she ask her kids for help about which came first; the egg or the chicken. I can recall my grandfather posing that one to me when I was about six. I still haven't worked it out.

Daylight saving

The referendum on daylight saving in Western Australia is to be held this coming weekend. Every day in the local daily newspaper there are arguments for and against daylight saving and in a public forum a bit of nasty slanging was thrown around between opposing proponents. Not much chance of Palestinians and Israelis finding peace when there is bitterness about such an issue as daylight saving. We are quite happy about daylight saving and I enjoy reading the letters page with the pathetic anti-daylighters' reasoning.

I have, this week, received a couple of offers to share in large lumps of cash. We are reasonably well off, so I will forward these emails on to any readers who might like to 'cash in' on this opportunity.

The texts of both messages are here....

There is an issue with the Western Union® Nigeria,the sum of $1,000,000.00 USD was credited to directed in cash,your email address was tagged the owner.

and,

I am SGT Joey, with the US Army in Iraq, we have 20,000,000.00 USD and we want to move it out of Iraq , respond for complete detailed plan as you will be entitled to 8 Million USD.

More on Maggies

We have three groups (tidings) of Magpies and not quite a 'Murder of Crows' visit daily for scraps. I like Magpies but they like using our outdoor furniture as their toilets. I have been cleaning the chairs daily with what looked like two different forms of bird poo. One lot is the white greasy stuff that embeds itself into the mesh of the chairs and the other is a dry looking smooth dollup about the size and shape of a small olive. Just today I was shown the difference between these cast-offs when one of the Magpies disgorged an olive shaped lump on the glass table. It would seem that when maggies dig for worms etc they ingest a lot of other material which is separated and chucked up. I feel a little like Charles Darwin when I hypothesize on my backyard observations.
Hope you aren't eating at the moment?

Joan has had over a week of bad flu symptoms with coughing and aching body bits. She slept in another bedroom for that period and tonight feels well enough to move back in with me. I was getting quite used to spreading myself over the Queen sized bed.

Our friend Haddon has had some good news with the latest result of his PSA test. It has dropped from 67 down to 36. Last year when he had both a flu and pneumonia injection at the same time he had a similar result so he tried it again this year and voila! His oncologist doesn't seem to think there is any correlation??

Today I visited John in his nursing home. He greeted me at the door saying that he hadn't seen me in months. I gave him a haircut, and shave and had a bit of a chat with him. He also had a chat with me but unfortunately we were talking about different things. John was an academic at a university before he retired and he has a good scientific vocabulary and to the casual observer he would seem to be speaking quite sensible sentences, however in the space of one sentence the topic can change three or four times. Very sad, especially when he does have brief moments of lucidity.

Fremantle Arts Centre

Kalamunda was popular this weekend. I had to drive up there on Friday evening to collect ten Macs destined for landfill. They are all good machines and I still have plenty of people on my list who are waiting for one.
And yesterday we travelled up to Kalamunda again to go to a large market. Kalamunda is a lovely village and except that it is quite a way from the ocean, prone to bushfires and pretty warm in summer, we could happily live there. The market was packed and parking was a problem. I don't think I have seen so many jewellery stalls.

We had to leave before midday as I had a chap coming to collect a computer early afternoon. He turned up early because he wanted to get back home in front of TV to watch the Derby between the Fremantle Dockers and West Coast Eagles. As soon as he left, we went into Fremantle to look at a couple of exhibitions, one at the old George Hotel and a couple at the Fremantle Arts centre. A lovely ex student of mine, Rebecca Baumann, had a showing and being an artistic philistine, I must gently ask her what it was all about. Whilst there we visited the small museum and looked at a permanent exhibition about immigration to W.A. Even though I knew about the migration policy after ww2, this exhibition illustrated the hardships the 'New Australians' encountered. We also spent some time in the Sound and Light exhibition which has been the baby of Richard Rennie a retired teacher. It is a superb collection to rival that section of Sydney's Powerhouse Museum.

The Fremantle Art Centre is a wonderful building constructed by convict labour from 1861 to 1865 as a purpose-built Asylum for the Criminally Insane.
The building was designed to accommodate......'sixteen Imperial lunatics [convicts]; six Colonial lunatics; one Colonial lunatic prisoner; nine Colonial female lunatics'.

There were a couple of dodgy deaths of inmates in the early 20th century and eventually patients were transferred to other institutions around the city and the building became a home for Old Women up until 1942 when it was taken over by the U.S. Navy as their W.A. headquarters. After the war, the building fell into disrepair and The W.A. Education Department wanted it demolished to get the land for sports fields for the adjacent John Curtin High School. Big hoo-ha about that idea and it was eventually restored as the Fremantle Arts Centre. It is a wonderful building and we are lucky that some people saved it from the 1960s 'out with the old' movement.

Kosher Pork

It seems that the Swine Flu has even hit Israel with one of its citizens contracting the disease. I guess many religious Jews will say 'serves him right'! The government of Israel has however renamed the Flu as Mexican Flu. It is possible to buy pork in Israel and it apparently is easy to find in Russian neighborhoods. It seems that Russian Jews ate pork?

Talking about Pork, I cooked sweet and sour pork last night....delicious! I always thought of S&S pork as an Australian pseudo-Chinese dish. Not so. See here.

Yesterday I spent the morning at an IT auction trying to win an A3 HQ printer. I did win it with a bid of $20. Unfortunately when I got it home and turned it on I found that one of the ink cartridges was missing. I got onto eBay and ordered a replacement cartridge at a nice price from the U.S. In about a week I will find out if I bought a good printer or not. I am not good at auctions. I have a case of itchy face when the bidding climbs and have to look away regularly to scratch my face or scalp. I'd hate to be caught bidding on a $1,000 item.

This morning a friend and I visited our Std 6 teacher who has just recently turned 100. Bronwyn is still very bright and waiting for her congratulatory letter from the Queen. She still remembers us in her class 57 years ago and also remembers other members of our families. Mind you, she hasn't indulged in partaking of alcohol or smoking and other sins in her 100 years. It was a nice visit. I got up early and made some cheese straws which were enjoyed by us and passing carers at her nursing home.

Kev, Bronnie and Jack

A few days ago there was a pirates' attack on an Italian cruise liner. The attack was thwarted by an Israeli security company on board the liner. On a commercial TV station that night the teaser for the news program trumpeted "Aussies Fight Off Pirates'. Dear dear me!! It seems that a couple of Australians threw plastic chairs and a plastic table over the side of the ship towards the pirates. That must have really scared them!

Unwelcome guest

Today I decided to do a bit of gardening, but backed off using my whipper-snipper when I found a humongous redback settled in next to it. I will leave it overnight to see where it goes. It is too big to get under doors. Second thought I should hit it with a liberal dose of spider spray in case it hides away somewhere and surprises me later on. Don't like spiders!
I hereby announce a new rule for posting articles on the net. The person who first sends the article/photo must put their name and email address at the bottom of it so that recipients can flame them for being either mischievous or gullible for believing what they have written or forwarded. So there; listen up every one of you one billion internet posters, Kev has spoken.