The crash, pharmaceuticals and a makeover

This week has brought a bit of good news to the Locks. Firstly we have reached the Medicare threshold and our scripts are now totally free. Previously we paid $5.30 per script regardless of how much the medication is actually costing the government. See the examples here...
Of course there is a price to pay for the cheap and eventually free medicines....you have to be at least 65 years of age. It is also income related with a generous income threshold of $80,000 per annum. We easily fit into that. Below 65...and wouldn't I like to be; the government through the PBS (Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme) subsidises the youngies, but too a lesser extent.

We were also reasonably happy about our meeting this morning with our financial adviser. During this last financial year our superannuation funds wept to the amount of around $200,000. The news today shows that things are on the mend with our funds gaining $22,000 since March. The villain in the crash was the Unlisted Property package which was part of our investment portfolio.

Prior to the crash there were many adverts for Industry Super Funds and a couple of well known actors told us that they were the way to go...not with a financial adviser. Haven't seen any of their ads for a while.

Who said Makeovers don't work? Check out Federal pollie, Belinda Neal, here. A before and after which featured on the cover of the AWW.

Speech problems

My bro-in-law Mike has difficulty with his speech due to Parkinson's Disease. Even though he does some speech exercises his speaking volume and clarity is quite poor; so much so that when I was looking after him over the weekend I missed a lot of what he was saying. I confess to nodding at a lot of his conversation without grasping the meaning of what he was trying to tell me....especially whilst travelling in the car.

I told my brother about Mike's problem and my somewhat wimpish method of coping. He related that to an episode of Seinfeld where Jerry and Elaine were dining out with a woman charity worker who had an extremely soft voice and Jerry did a Kev and nodded his way through an inaudible conversation and without realising it, agreed to wear a pirate blouse with puffy sleeves to a fundraiser. Good episode!

Mike sitting

Joan and her sister Dorothy are on a weekend retreat at Dwellingup. I am staying over a couple of days with bro-in-law Mike at his place. On Friday when I arrived at his place there was a carer looking after him and he left soon after I arrived. Mike is on new medication for Parkinsons and it is taking a while for him to get used to it. He has long periods when he is 'out'.

I made a mild Tikka Marsala curry and some rice to have last night. I also brought some of my chilli sauce. Mike's tastes must have changed radically because he dolloped a lot of the chilli sauce over his curry. This morning he is still 'out' and is not expected to be able to move around until closer to midday. Then we have a few tasks to complete...off to JB HiFi to exchange some gear that he didn't need and I believe, help him construct a wheel barrow from several he has collected from gutter mart. Hope not.

I am not good as a guest; creeping around so as not to disturb others and avoiding the toilet flush. Even at home I get up in the morning and do my toiletries in another bathroom on the other side of the house. Mike cannot sleep well in bed and so moves into the dining area and sleeps in a special chair. Normally I would be cooking a nice cholesterol breakfast at this stage, but I don't want to disturb Mike.

I have just helped him with his tablets which have to be taken eight times a day to a total of 38
tabs. It is very difficult to do when he is 'out'.

Dorothy, his wife, has much to contend with and I am here for just two nights.

Malice and Paranoia

In this morning's paper there is a reprint of an article in the Washington Post talking of the deep hate and paranoia of the extreme right wing in the U.S. It is frightening when Baptist Pastors in Californian and Arizona churches pray for Obama's death. Not just death, but consignment to hell!

I know that Australia's population is minuscule compared to that of the U.S.A., but I doubt that many Australians would wish death and destruction of the leader of an opposition party.

Obama's Health Bill has the freaks coming out of the woodwork. Maybe the protesters need to look at Australia and Britain to better understand that a little bit of socialism, when it comes to health care, is very good indeed.

Travel Insurance

Yesterday we were contacted by our travel insurer, HBF. They had decided what they would and wouldn't insure us for when we go on a cruise to Indonesia in January. The gal who talked to me advised that they were happy to insure me for high blood pressure (controlled with medication) and high cholesterol, also controlled, but they would not cover me for prostate cancer and Proteinuria (protein in the urine). Strange really, seeing that I had a radical prostatectomy 11 years ago and was given the all clear about five years back and the GP and a specialist have suggested no treatment for the level of protein in my urine!?

Joan got knocked back on Reynaud's Syndrome. Reynaud's is when during the cold months insufficient blood reaches the tips of the fingers making them temporarily white. A change of medication fixed that problem this year.

They didn't ask if we can walk well or likely to fall down a gangway and have to be flown home.

We watched the ABC program 4Corners last night and it reported on a NT Government initiative to have English alone taught in isolated schools in Aboriginal settlements rather than a mixture of English and indigenous languages. There were a few very dedicated teachers who had pioneered the multi-language approach and they and 4Corners seemed to suggest that the government had got it wrong and that unless the kids were taught their own language it would be lost forever.

Having taught in primary education in Papua New Guinea, I saw the use of English as the language of instruction, the only real way to reach proficiency in a short time. In PNG at the time I taught in primary schools, the parents and villagers spoke mostly their own language and so, the kids learnt their language as we learn ours...from our parents and surroundings. This is probably not the case with aboriginal kids in isolated outstations as most of their parents speak a crude form of English. Elders, could of course, run basic language lessons in the local indigenous language so that it is not lost.

Geraldton Senior High School

This morning we returned home after an over-nighter at the Vines Resort. The function was Joan's year 12, 50th anniversary and surprisingly most of the group turned up. The high school was Geraldton Senior High, one of only five senior high schools in the state at that time.

There were very amusing speeches and a commemorative booklet of the careers of each of the cohort. Almost every one of them did amazing things in a wide variety of careers. There were airline pilots, medicos, lots of teachers and administrators. I was very impressed and wondered where I had missed out. I guess the answer is intelligence. In the 1950s very few kids went on to year 12 and a Leaving Certificate....a Junior Certificate was the crème de la crème at Fremantle Boys School. The Junior Certificate got you into a bank job or an accountant's office. This group all graduated and mostly entered university. At 67+ years many of them are still employed. They plan another reunion in three years when most of them will be 70.

One fellow attended briefly because of major physical problems. Some six years ago his daughter's estranged husband knocked on his front door and shot him twice with a double barrelled shotgun, blasting most of his gut out and losing a knee. The gunman then shot himself.
He was fed through a tube for months whilst surgeons rebuilt him.

The resort was very swish and Kangaroos seem to like it too. There were lots of them out on the greens this morning.

Uncle Jay

I subscribe to 'Uncle Jay Explains the News' which is supposedly aimed at explaining the news to kids, but is a humorous take on the news mainly aimed at adults. I thought it wasn't too bad at all.

In a recent posting by 'Uncle Jay' I noticed an advert placed by the sponsor Google. I clicked on the ad and found the most amazing diatribe about the 'New World Order' in which Barack Obama, Javier Solana of the European Union, Prince Charles of Wales, Queen Beatrix of Netherlands and Prince Hassan of Jordan are all part of the Masonic Antichrist world plan. Wow!

If you want to get the lowdown on all these meanies you will need to purchase the document and of course you will need to get in early before the Antichrists have it taken off the WWW.

You can take a look at the teaser here.

I was surprised to say the least that Uncle Jay would have such an advert on his page and so wrote to him asking if he agreed with what the document said.....see here:

Hi, Kevin. The ads on my site are generated automatically by Google Ads, based on the words that the page contains. That sometimes results in some weird stuff.

No, I don't endorse everything that appears, and occasionally will block something that I think is inappropriate for the kids who follow my site. While I think that the ad you mention is a bit out there, I don't consider it something to block.

Thanks,
Uncle Jay



On Mon, Sep 7, 2009 at 7:47 PM, KevinLock <kalock@iinet.net.au> wrote:

Name KevinLock Email kalock@iinet.net.au City, State Western Australia Your Message I was surprised to see an advert on Uncle Jay's latest episode promoting a paper by www.VisionRevisited.com headed Obama's New World Order.
Do you endorse the content therein?

I don't know whether I should give Uncle Jay a miss?

Westinghouse SweepEZE

I wrote about the auto vacuum dust bin our son gave me for Fathers' Day. It worked a treat when we initially opened the present and oohed and aahed over it as one does when given a pressie. Then yesterday I tried it again and the auto function failed to work. It is not a biggy....the broom can touch a manual button on the front of the machine and it certainly does suck the dust up.

On closer inspection there are two sensors near the vacuum mouth...I cleaned them with a tissue, but still no go. On the warranty brochure there is a 1 800 number so I settled down in a comfy chair expecting it to be a 45 minute adventure. Pleasant surprise! A human answered and put me straight through to a Tech. No recorded warning messages about the call being monitored for training purposes, no list of alternatives to press to get further into the bowels of customer assistance.....straight through!

The Tech bloke asked what the product was and I told him it was a Westinghouse SweepEZE. He confidently said...'So you're the bloke who bought that?' Funny; but not the usual conversation one has with customer service. He explained that they were long gone from the product lineup and that they didn't even have one to replace mine. He didn't have a solution as most products these days are not repaired merely replaced. I told him it wasn't a problem and we wished each other well and I hung up.

Strangely I came out of the whole thing feeling good. Actual voice contact and then a bloke with a sense of humour, even if the joke was on me.

Burmese immigrants

A few days ago I had a call from a Burmese student studying at Curtin University. He had heard about the free Mac giveaway I am doing and wanted one. He took away a nice eMac and was very pleased with himself. The next day another Burmese chap rang and also wanted to get one...another eMac gone. Then yesterday the word had filtered down through local Burmese families and a couple of women rang saying they wanted to 'attend my house to get two computers'.

When they arrived they were keen to tell me where they came from ....'Myanmar'....'Aung San Suu Kyi!'

They figured that we Australians didn't know where Burma is and I suppose that until the publicity about the long house arrest of the activist Aung San Suu Kyi (see here) most Australians didn't know too much about Burma. It was brought to the fore recently when a looney Yank swam across a lake to her house and just as she was due to be released the Junta used that as an excuse to charge her with a breach of her sentence. Looks as though she may be housebound for some time yet.

These Burmese....it is quite difficult to say Mayanmarese, are pleasant people who look as though they will fit nicely into Australian's multicultural society.

Fathers' Day

Fathers' Day yesterday saw our small family of 2+2 get together for a nice BBQ lunch and a few drinkies. Helen bought me a carton of boutique beer of different brands and Martin bought me/us an automatic dust bin. He knows that I like smart gear and although we probably wont use it very much, I must admit that it is very smart indeed. Plugged in and set to auto, the hausfrau merely sweeps dust and dirt towards the machine and it starts up and sucks it in.

I haven't been to the movies for a long time, probably a couple of years. When a callow youth, a bunch of the blokes would head into Fremantle on a Saturday night at the movies at either Hoyts or the Princess Theatre. My mate Don (Happy) Rowe started a little tradition of carefully looking at the credits and noting who the makeup artist for each movie was. None of us had any interest with makeup except that we did notice it on the fairer sex. The lineup of makeup artists included Willy Tuttle, Wally Westmore and Howard Smit. For some reason we were more fond of the name Willy Tuttle and when the credits were rolling we all managed to clap and cheer when Will Tuttle's name appeared.

Can't explain why we carried on about a makeup artist, but there again many of the ideas Happy came up with were off beat. We all loved Hap and he left us around 1972.

Reflecting on those picture show nights, the couple of us who owned motorcycles were easily identified by the black stains on our hands from the perishing rubber handlebar grips and the dull oil stain on the right foot shoe, due to the constant oil leaks on the gear change lever.

Drug contraindications

I take a couple of drugs for cholesterol…lipidil and Lipitor. When I filled a script a couple of days ago the Pharmacist asked me if I knew that that combination of drugs was contraindicated and could cause muscle pain and wastage. I was not aware of that, but the fact that I have had quite severe pains in my calves over about three weeks prompted me to seek an appointment with our GP.

One of the big no-nos with GPs is to front up with a printout from an Internet page which declares that the drug(s) he has prescribed is somehow dangerous. John, our GP, informed me that Pharmacists are wannabe doctors and one shouldn’t worry too much about what they say. He knew the story about contraindication with those two drugs, but informed me that I would have a better chance of winning lotto than having such a problem described. Never-the-less he did send me off to have a blood test to see if indeed there was a problem associated with the drugs.

Well, blow me down, if there wasn’t a news item on TV last night suggesting that studies in Tasmania show that Lipitor can cause muscle pain and wastage. I gave the Path. Centre some blood this morning so that they can tell me if I am OK or not.

Also this morning I visited John, our friend, in his lock-down nursing home. John has dementia and I don’t think he really knew who I was today. We sat out in the sun and I engaged him in conversation by asking questions about his family, his work (he still thinks he is a senior lecturer at a university) and anything else that I could think of. John responded to all my questions and suggestions, but beyond the first few words he wandered off the topic. I found it amazing that part of his brain has lost memory and what he is saying is jumbled and off topic, but his speech is well formed and in orderly sentences. Who knows how that all works?

The great beer heist

Tonight Joan cooked her steak and baked vegetable dish....wonderful!

The steak was butter fried beef Scotch fillet, very nice but the pièce de résistance was Joan's baked vegetables.

Mushrooms, zucchini, fennel, tomato and anything else in the vegie drawer of the fridge. They are sliced or chunked; spread out and sprinkled with sliced garlic, sea salt, olive oil and basil ( as in Faulty). Popped in the oven at 200c for about 30-40 minutes.

It goes down well with a glass of Belgium Hoegaarden beer. Unfortunately Hoegaarden is now in short supply as a local lad and his mate pinched 1349 cartons of the stuff worth around $34,000. See here.

Rum Corp NSW

John Della Bosca the NSW Health Minister has resigned having been caught out having a bit on the side in Parliament House and at his Mum’s place. When a security guard asked for ID John chucked a wobbly and later told his gal to tell security that she was his niece. See, romance is not dead. "I don't know how he managed to do his job when he spent so much time with me," she said.

He copped it sweet and resigned. He will stay in parliament, but not as a minister.

Johnno’s dalliance is not unexpected as his wife, Belinda Neal is not a darling..more the harridan. They were both involved in what was called ‘Iguanagate’ a bit of a stoush at a restaurant. Read about it here.

John apparently told his younger lover that he would leave his wife for her, but I reckon he lost his nerve when he fronted his missus. Don’t know why?

Here is a pic of John and Belinda filched from the SMH.

Reading material

Yesterday when Graeme and I were reminiscing about the early 60s in isolated postings in Papua he mentioned that, as an avid reader, it was very difficult for him to get books, newspapers and magazines etc. He relied on the newspaper packing in his regular supplies from Port Moresby’s Steamships Trading Company. In one box of supplies he thought he had won big time as there was a mountain of pages from the Post Courier newspaper. Unfortunately they were all the same page; misprints sourced from the print shop of the newspaper.

Today I collected a computer nicely packed in its original box with lots of newspapers as padding. I dumped most of the papers, but one liftout magazine must have fallen on the floor. In front of TV tonight I noticed Joan with a puzzled look thumbing through the supplement. I enjoyed pointing out the date….January 2009.

Some years ago, brother Graham and I would save the April 1^st newspaper still wrapped in plastic and substitute it for the current paper retrieved from friends’ lawns. Always a good result with that gag.

I must confess here that my bro first pulled that prank on me. I read the entire paper without realising that it was a year old. Even the comics looked good.

47 years ago...

Yesterday we had a visit from a couple touring around Australia in a caravan. Graeme and I taught in the same district in Papua 47 years ago. We had a lot to reminisce about that year we shared in the Gulf District in 1962.

If we could sit down with a few other colleagues, primed with a few drinks, we would have the material for an amazing book of our adventures in colonial times in PNG. Papua New Guinea, as I remember, was never referred to as a colony of Australia and the main thrust of education in the country was to work towards independence. I can also remember at the time that I could not perceive that independence would come in the foreseeable future. It did come about in 1975 and Joan and I joined the celebrations in the Northern District of Papua.

It has been said that Independence came a little early when Australia handed over the reins to a democratically elected government. That statement is probably true, but at the time of independence there were no armed independence movements fighting to ‘throw off the yoke’ of colonialism.

Since independence PNG has relied heavily on foreign aid mainly from Australia.

Graeme and his wife Elaine, visited us here and we took them on a tour of the local area which they probably would not have the time to explore themselves. I wonder if we will ever meet up again.

I've been had!

Last night I had a late phone call about the computers I distribute for free. The lad wanted to come visit at around 10.15pm to collect a machine. I told him no because it was late and I wanted to go to bed. He asked if his father could collect it the next day after 5pm and I agreed. When dad arrived he was a very large and loud Chinese fellow who in the space of 10 minutes took five calls on his mobile. I showed him the basics of operation and we carried the bits out to his large shiny black Mercedes. He gave me his card, mentioning that he was a successful finance broker. Just the sort of needy person I try and give computers to...Not!

Over the last couple of days I have been doing maintenance on a unit we own at Quinns Rocks a seaside suburb about 58 kilometres from our place in Bibra Lake. Over the years there has been little maintenance done and lots of work needs to be done before the new tenant moves in. The previous tenant has left a huge garden shed, mainly because it would have been too hard to remove. When he was cleaning up he threw a kids trampoline and a slide over the back fence onto a vacant block. The block has great ocean views and is for sale for $900,000. I have asked the agent to contact him and see if he can't take his rubbish to the tip. I don't want to be too mean as he has left me a nice shed.

Quinns Rocks has attracted a large British migrant population. It seems like almost all the businesses are run/owned by Brits. In the Bunnings hardware store every person I spoke to was a Pom. I guess the word gets around that there are plenty of like minded people in certain areas and that draws them to those areas. Rockingham is similarly attractive to Britishers.

In a previous posting I mentioned a smart crab; and a friend, Dennis, today related a true story about an evening of crabbing off the Bicton jetty in the Swan River some time in the 1950s. When we were young there were so many crabs in the river that bathers had to be careful they didn't get bitten by them. In Den's story, a Mr Hugh Rudderham, who was a neighbor of Den's was crabbing with a drop net off the end of the Bicton jetty and operating a carbide lamp for light. As Mr R. pulled his drop net, the assembled mob cheered at the size of the Blue Manna in the net. He leaned over the monster holding his carbide lamp and the bluey grabbed his carbide lamp finger. In the ensuing dance the crab and the carbide lamp went in the drink. Mr Rudderham continued his dance exclaiming...'For Cracking Great Lumps of Ice'. I will leave it to the reader to interpret that.

Timor Sea oil slick

I watched part of the football match between the Eagles and the Crows on Saturday and our home team was crushed. The psychology of sport is very complex. Anyway after the defeat of our lads the victorious Crows’ Hymn (?) was belted out in the stadium. Oi, I thought, they have pinched the Marines Hymn! And they had. It seems that most of the AFL teams cannot write an original song and have filched traditional music (out of copyright) from somewhere. Looking into it a bit further it seems that even the marines acquired their Hymn from France

U.S.Marine Corp Hymn

The song has an obscure origin-the words date from the 19th century, but no one knows the author. The music is from the Gendarmes' Duet from the opera Geneviève de Brabant by Jacques Offenbach, which had its début in Paris in 1859. The Marine Corps secured a copyright on the song on August 19, 1919, but it is now in the public domain.

So there you go. I am now working on a new version to be sung at my funeral service: Kev's Hymn. The words will include such as… Nature’s Gentleman; respected by all, pillar of society etc.

There is a major oil spill from an oil drilling rig in the Timor Sea. It is unknown how the leak has occurred, but the crew has been evacuated and an aircraft is spraying a dispersant on the slick. It is estimated to take about seven weeks before it is under control. Apparently it is not a biggy as the leak is a mixture of gas and oil and evaporation is helping somewhat.

Although I was only a wee kid during WW2, I have read much on naval battles and convoy sinkings , but strangely nothing about oil slicks. The amount of shipping sunk in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans was huge. What happened to all that oil? Similarly when I was a youth, Fremantle Harbour had few restriction on dumping of wastes from ships into the harbour and subsequently the Swan River. When swimming in the river near the harbour entrance we had to look out for blind mullets set loose from ship toilets. Strangely with all the garbage from ships heading up river with the incoming tide, fish were abundant, mussels and crabs everywhere. One of the fish species in the river was the Trumpeter..commonly referred to as shitfish. The crabs were large and delicious. I recall one huge crab after being tossed into the pot on the stove reaching out with its claw and turning the gas off.

Bought/Brought

The largest car dealer in Western Australia is one John Hughes. He is very successful and is Australia's largest Hyundai dealer. He also sells VWs and other brands. He regularly takes out four page newspaper adverts of customers' glowing letters of praise. We have bought several new cars from him. On his recent TV ads he did the bought/brought confusion and I wondered why someone didn't step in and say to John that it is brought rather than bought. I guess that he spends so much money with advertising that no one wants to upset him.

I have collected more good computers from W.A. Newspapers. they are relatively late model computers (Macs) and have 20" LCD screens. I now have about 25 machines ready to be distributed to needy folks. I will contact the known organisations letting them know that there are more loaded and ready to go.

I gave our son a nice fast PC which will be helpful in his CAD studies. When I delivered it to his place I was amazed at his latest collection of gear from GutterMart. There is a large TV and a bit of good furniture. He will soon have to put some of it out on the road himself. Methinks he could become a bag lady.

Wray Family

Whilst at the old Albany Cemetery we found a headstone of the Wray family. Joan’s side of the family are Wrays, so we took a snap of the headstone and printed it off to take to her uncle and aunts’ 60th wedding anniversary celebration yesterday. It turns out that the grave was indeed Boy’s great grandfather and great grandmother. The mob at the Sunday celebrations didn’t know of the grave’s existence. ‘Boy’ is not his real name it is just that he was the only boy out of five children and that name has stuck throughout his life.

The celebration was a biggy. The current Wrays number 8 kids with 20-30 grandkids and great grand-children approaching double figures. Their family shows are always accompanied with musical items poems and speeches and usually a humorous quiz.

Yesterday, letters of congratulation from QE2, the Governor General, the State Premier and Leader of the Opposition and other pollies were read out. I thought at the time that they were fake messages, but later found that there is a system for getting such messages from notables. I think there are a few conditions and so cannot possibly hope to get a note from the Queen for my 70^th birthday in November. Damn!

Here is a snap of the headstone….

This Photo shows the second generation Australian Wray family. The father in the centre of the photograph is the son of John and Celia, and Joan’s grandfather, Albert, is the handsome bloke at right hand rear of the pic. The Wrays were, and are, into large families. The family group photo shows 12 siblings, but one had already died and another is absent from the photo.

Cemetery, waterfront and old Post Office...Albany.

The old Albany cemetery is close to the CBD and the headstones of old tell some interesting stories. A couple of recent (1947) graves have what, at first, seemed accusatory statements that the two men were ‘Killed’ at Sea aboard the ship the SS British Confidence. The Albany library has an extract from the local paper explaining what happened.

Article in Albany Advertiser 26/06/1947 "Two Killed When Wave Strikes Ship", describing an accident on board the tanker British Confidence which resulted in the death of Geoffrey Todd and William John Murt.
There are a few graves of Chinese people and all their graves face north to China.
This is a spliced copy of two very old, mucky photographs of the waterfront at the bottom of the town.
The railway station on the left is now the Visitors’ Information Centre and on the roadway above the waterfront there is a rotunda (?) which now looks like this….

The old photograph was almost certainly taken from the old Post Office, a wonderful building which now houses the local campuses of UWA and Curtin University.
Tired of Albany yet? Too bad, there's more to come!

Albany History

When we stayed over at Albany our accommodation was at Middleton Beach which is about 6 kilometres from the Albany CBD. This is a pic of a bus trip to Middleton Beach circa 1910.

Another landmark in Albany town is Dog Rock. Here are two pics, one around 1895 and another a few days ago.

I have two photographs of the Albany waterfront taken around 1900 and will attempt to stitch them together for another posting.

This photo is of a house built circa 1872 by the Cull family and became the home of Mathew Cull, the verger of St. John's Anglican church. It is still in the family and rented out. It must be quite dreary inside.

Albany Aboriginal Centre

We have just returned from two nights in Albany 406 kilometres south of Fremantle. It was a busy, but very pleasant trip. Going down we had about three hundred Ks of rain which was not that nice for an oldie like me doing 110kph. Those big wheat trucks create a water wash whirlwind but fortunately there are plenty of overtaking lanes on Albany Highway.

Once in Albany we got set up in our motel room. Should give a plug for the Dolphin Inn at Middleton Beach…excellent facilities and inexpensive. $79 per night for a two bedroom apartment. That saved on having to brave the cold evenings to go to a restaurant.

That afternoon we had arranged to meet a coordinator of the Albany Aboriginal Community Centre to deliver and set up four computers with the aim of helping combat the alarming suicide rate amongst aboriginal youth in Albany.

Unfortunately nobody turned up and we made arrangements to return the next day at 9.30am hoping that there would be people to give some instructions in the programs we had loaded on the machines and general instructions on the Mac operating system. This time we were let in and had the place to ourselves until a retired aboriginal lady came along and we were able to show her how things worked. Although she had not used a Mac before she very quickly got a handle on the operation and the software and is going to be the IT specialist. It was stressed that they did not want to place computers in individual homes and they are hoping it will bring youth and oldies together to learn to write letters, play games etc and communicate with each other.

She is a very pleasant person and we chatted about the organization and the building. We were told that there is no ongoing government funding for maintenance and development of the facility. Another younger woman joined us and we were told that although funding was good, their community had for too long been welfare dependent and for funds to keep their community centre going it was better for them to fund it themselves with the help of a few donations such as ours. There is a perception among many white Australians that aboriginals get too much welfare.

The computers are ready to be used and we have requests for more machines for specific cases…one being a young woman who has recently been released from prison and is starting full-time studies.

Although the centre was a little run down, we were impressed by the efforts of the people to get their people together for cultural events etc.

Whilst down at Albany we did all the touristy things and there is much to see there. It is a little chilly there at the moment, but the coast and islands are magnificent. The town (is it a city?) is very hilly with many fine houses with wonderful views out to sea. It is however, mountain goat country and one needs to be quite a good driver to negotiate very steep driveways.

Some Pics of Albany tomorrow.


A teaser.....Albany Town Hall

Albany Western Australia

We have made the arrangements to install some computers at an aboriginal drop-in centre in Albany. Albany has a quaint colonial feel to it with many old original buildings still in good repair.
We will be heading down south on Monday morning and hope to be in town just after lunch.

When we lived in Bicton, we were the second owners of a large colonial house built by a Scottish emigrant in 1897. In the house was his diary of his voyage to Australia in 1888. I have reproduced a part of his diary pertaining to the ship's first landfall on Australian soil at the port of Albany. It makes for an interesting read. The observation he made about aboriginals and their skin problems is similar to some native people in Papua New Guinea where skin fungus problems are quite common. The long time taken to 'coal' the ship was because the coal had to be transported to the ship at anchor by small boats. The ship was the Orient Line's SS Ormuz.

Thursday, a splendid day and we are now in sight of Australian land and what a great commotion it causes on board ship, all eagerly eyeing it with such a relish as we have not seen land for nearly three weeks.
In the evening we had a lecture on Temperance by Mr Booth the Temperance orator who gave a first class lecture and afterwards invited all to come forward and sign the pledge and get a piece of blue ribbon attached to their button hole, but only half a dozen availed themselves of the opportunity.

At twelve o’clock tonight we anchored at Albany, after which we retired for the night. Friday, beautiful weather still, when we got up we find them busy coaling the ship, which takes a very long time when compared to other places on the route. It was expected that they would be through at 5 o’clock in the afternoon, but instead they got through at 12 at night. The notice was posted up that passengers could go ashore till 5 o’clock and which a great number did. Albany is a very young place at present, but it is a very pretty little place you would almost think that they had just cleared away as much of the bush as allowed them to build as all the rest seems nothing but bush and sand. There is also a good deal of granite Rock, same as Aberdeen granite but much softer. The shops here are very neat and clean and they also sell their goods at a very moderate price, fruit being very cheap.

The people here are principally English, we took on about two dozen passengers who have left it owing to it not being well enough developed yet for their businesses or trades. There are a number of aborigines here who are about the most miserable looking creatures man looked on, being covered with some kind of a skin.

Charles Darwin also visited Albany in 1836.

The 'Beagle's' final port of call in Australia was the infant settlement of Albany, on the southern coast of Western Australia. Darwin was not very impressed with Albany as it was then. But he and/or Covington did manage to collect some zoological specimens that were new to science, including a non-marsupial bush rat, two fish (namely the longhead flathead and the common jack mackerel), and 48 insect species.

Ibex and us

Last night I watched a National Geographic special called 'The Wall of Death'. Brilliant!

The Wall of Death is an almost vertical cliff face in Israel on the Dead Sea where there are large colonies of Ibex (large goats) that live on a barren mountainside and have to descend vertical routes to get to food and water daily. They make the daily descent to water and food and manage, mostly, to survive the attacks of wolves, leopards, snakes, hyenas and vultures to return to the safety of the clifftop.

I found the fact that leopards, wolves, wolves and hyenas existed in Israel pretty amazing.

What did hit home to me is that the Ibex, at about two weeks of age start to practise their maleism. Is that a word? Anyway, they, at a very young age, know that they have to be strong and a winner to mate with the female Ibex. Plenty of clashing of heads and later, large horns.
As is the case in all of nature the tough guys win out and get the gal(s).

Made me thankful that somewhere back in the past, humans established a few rules about marriage and Kev was able to get a good wife without too much agro. In humankind there is that same, albeit diluted, animal attraction. I do see it sometimes when I notice the very attractive of the females of our species go for the the more animal of humanity.

Crematoria

South Australian authorities have recently taken another look at the operation of crematoria, something that wasn’t taken seriously at Auschwitz. Strict conditions apply to crematoria disposing of human and animal remains. Pollution in the form of odour, smoke, greenhouse gases and chemicals is addressed with requirements in the design of crematoria.

My brother lives quite close to Fremantle Cemetery and at odd times we, enjoying a lager out the back of his house, have noticed a smell not unlike that emitting from a McDonalds outlet? Nah; can’t be?

We have made arrangements to install five computers at the Noongar Centre in Albany and will drive down to Albany in about ten days. The director of the centre said it was a good idea and would give bored kids something to do. There have been a number of suicides amongst aboriginal youth in the town. We plan to stay overnight at least and take a lot of photographs of the historic town and maybe catch up with an ex-student who is teaching there.

Albany, like Fremantle, was a U.S. Navy submarine base during the second world war. It was at Albany that test were carried out to prove to navy authorities that early torpedoes were faulty and that many misses were because the torpedoes were running deep and missing targets. See here. Those tests caused the redesign of the Mk XIV torpedo and with that high success rates against Japanese shipping. One of the successful sinkings was that of the Montevideo Maru, a Japanese cargo ship carrying Australian POWs and civilians from the Japanese held New Guinea port of Rabaul en route to Hainan. All prisoners died in the sinking.

To this day there are people who believe that the Montevideo Maru was not carrying Australian prisoners when it was sunk. One suggestion is that they were embarked on the ship at Rabaul and thrown overboard at sea. For those who love such conspiracy theories, you can read more here.

There are calls for a HMAS Sydney type investigation and search for the wreck of the Montevideo Maru. There were more Australian deaths on that ship than on the Sydney.

possessing a smoking implement

A couple of days ago there was a newspaper report about a police raid on a Meth Lab in the Perth suburbs. A woman was arrested and charged on a series of charges, one of which was ‘possessing a smoking implement’. I really don’t know how the law works on this one. There are literally dozens of stores selling smoking implements around the city and suburbs, but the sale of these implements is not deemed to be illegal; just if you have one in your possession?????

Yesterday I did a computer collection from three sources and got some very nice machines. One place I went to was a residence in the northern suburb of Ballajura. It is a very nice area and in front of the house I visited is a lake of what looks like about 10+ hectares in area. It is a very attractive outlook for the surrounding dwellings.

Every household in W.A. with a backyard swimming pool has to register it with the local council and regular inspections are made by council officials. Special childproof locks and fences ensure that kids cannot easy have access to the water and possibly drown. Our pool in Bicton was regularly inspected and we had to make some modifications to security over the years, but when we tired of swimming and converted it into a large pond, council informed us that we no longer had to stay on the register and security was not an issue. I figured that every council has small lakes within their areas and to fence them off would be very expensive and certainly look crappy. And so that is how we had an unregistered pool/pond without inspections. Crazy??

Yesterday’s newspaper also had an interesting article about some students (boys) getting expelled from a Baptist College quite close to where we live. It seems that on a school camp, the lads took along a joint and several boys had a toke. The word got out and the lads were sacked. Parents of the boys appeared on TV saying that the treatment was harsh and one fellow suggested that if they really were Christians they would forgive the boys and reinstate them. It seems that each student enrolling at the college signs a contract of behaviour and as in a TV game show….’dope is on the list’.

I taught all my teaching career in government schools and have always felt that private schools take the kids from wealthy families and if those kids muck up, toss them out and they have to return to a government school. Government schools can only expel a child for the most serious repeat offences. Perhaps government should legislate to force private schools to take a percentage of bogans in their cohort. For non-Australians; Bogans are rude and rough rednecks.

Bugs Bunny 1940

Today is the day in 1940 that Bugs Bunny made his debut. His trademark 'eh what's up Doc?' is said to have been inspired by Groucho Marx. I recently saw a Bugs Bunny cartoon and he seems to have found the elixir of life looking better than he originally looked in 1940.

In the Inside Cover of today's West Australian newspaper there is a small article about John Ryan the creator of Pugwash. It's a good read.....
Click it to enlarge.

Our daughter Helen has had her car window smashed in for the third time in three years. The area she lives in is very popular especially with the villains. During the day, groups of lads wearing the Hip Hop gear cruise the suburb surveying the layout of the place and returning at night to brazenly break and enter cars in parking areas. It seems that even when an alarm goes off, residents of the units where Helen lives are too scared to confront the villains. The bad boys don't bother rushing the job; one resident had the battery stolen from under the bonnet.

Helen's car is a Mazda 626 which someone imported from Britain when they emigrated. The VIN (vehicle Identification Number) doesn't tally with anything in the Mazda Australia lineup and we are having some difficulty identifying the correct window glass. I emailed Mazda Australia, but they say they cannot help in finding the appropriate VIN for Helen's car. I would think it would be quite simple for them to email Mazda Japan...but it would seem not.

Human Pampillomavirus

Well, things are-a-changing! In this morning’s ABC news there was a report about the possible need to vaccinate young men for the HPV (Human Pampillomavirus) This announcement didn’t make me choke on my Wheaties, but when Joan told me that for HPV, young females can get a free vaccination to prevent the virus and that a free vaccination for young men to prevent mouth infection was being considered because of ‘changing mores’, I admit to coughing a bit. Don’t fully understand the implications? Google HPV.

Another snippet from this morning’s West Australian. The Leader of the Opposition, Malcolm Turnbull made the following comment about a fellow Liberal Senator, Wilson (Iron Bar) Tuckey.
Wilson, the Federal Member for O’Connor, is the only comic relief in Federal Parliament since Keating opted out. He is a silly old man who earned the title of Iron Bar for donging an aboriginal fella with a bit of pipe. His own party is embarrassed by him, but I reckon they keep him there on a long lead to act up like a junk yard dog. Rumour has it that he aims to be ejected from the House on Thursdays so that he can catch an early plane back home to W.A.

Our son Martin leaned on us again for monetary assistance to get a paining tooth looked at. He joined HBF, the state’s largest medical fund, and we paid the dentist the $220 up front for an extraction. Must have taken all of ten minutes. Martin wanted the dentist to repair and rebuild the tooth, but he was informed that it was a root canal job which would end up costing thousands. He went for the extraction, not because of the money involved in a reconstruction, but I believe, because of those words….ROOT CANAL.

HBF will refund him (us) 60% of the $220, so it isn’t too bad. When I drove him to the dentist I introduced him to Oil of Cloves and he was amazed that the pain immediately vanished. Some grannies’ remedies do work!

Albany, Western Australia

Today I made contact with a liaison officer from the Albany City Council who is to facilitate the installation of a few Mac computers at the Noongar Centre. This centre is catering for aboriginal youth in the south of W.A. where there have been a number of suicides.

I am unsure if computers will be the panacea, but they cannot but do some good to keep kids busy and entertained. We are prepared to travel south some 410 kilometres to install the machines and give basic instructions on their use. Albany is a lovely historic town which unfortunately has no need for a sunglasses stores....it is mostly grey and overcast. Photos when and if we go South.

Tonight on ABC television there was a nice look back at the role of goats in early Australian history.

It reminded me of my foray into goats when we lived in Papua New Guinea. Each time we drove to the coast from Maprik to Wewak in the Sepik district, we saw goats in the coconut plantations near Wewak. I decided that the school should have goats and we could get real milk rather than the terrible Tetra Packs of LongLife milk available at the time. I decide to buy a small herd of 15 goats and had them transported to the school. Wrong!!!

They were not welcomed by the Agriculture Department and they would not give me any assistance when the first goat succumed to bloat. Bloat is a gaseous condition caused by consumption of young fodder creating a fermentation in the rumen. The only advice that I received was a combination of 'Kill em all!' and from a kindly Ag. Officer...'shove a screwdriver in its rumen to let the gas out' . I couldn't do the screwdriver surgery, so drenched the goat with peanut oil which stopped the fermentation.

The goat problem was solved soon after, by striking students who were unhappy about billy goats urinating over their mess tables. Goats were sold and I cannot imagine why we didn't eat them. Many things I have done could have been done better.

Nursing homes

This morning I visited our friend John in his nursing home. I don’t think he really knew who I was. I took him a pack of Ferrero Roche chocolate which he seems to enjoy. We were sitting at a dining table with a couple of other ‘inmates’ and I offered one to each of them. The man sitting opposite me stared blankly at me and didn’t take up the offer and a lady who turned out to be completely blind informed me that she doesn’t like chocolate, so John had the job of finishing of the packet.

The dining room as lunch time approached is the place to get a good idea of most of the semi-mobile people in the nursing home. I expect that most of them have names given by the staff. There is one woman who for 17 months that John has been in care has been incessantly yelling out ‘help me, help me!’, punctuated by ‘get me a cup of tea’. It must drive the rest of them…….?

There are two students from the nearby Iona Presentation College doing their work experience/community service gig. They both looked shocked by what they were confronted with. Today was their first day and I guess that they, like us, hope we don’t end up locked away sitting out our time left playing bingo etc. Most of the patients are past playing games such as bingo and I noticed a board with ‘sounds like’ words ……prance, dance; France etc. I didn’t see anyone there who would be gung ho at such exercises. Most people don’t even watch TV.

Whilst there are plenty of staff there, some of the patients are not well looked after. Quite a few came to lunch with food stains around their mouths and sleep in their eyes.

One visitor is a fellow I know who visits his wife there. In front of her he moaned that they are feeding her a supplement to keep her alive. ‘I want her to die and get it over with’ he told John’s wife a couple of days ago. He had previously told me that he had tipped her supplement down the drain. Ouch!

No nice photos with this post.

Madang, Papua New Guinea

I am subscribed to PNG Gossip, a free weekly newsletter of news and events from Papua New Guinea. One of the articles provided a link to a blog by an American bloke living in Madang. It is very interesting to me as there seems to be a large expatriate population in Madang and with that a reasonable social life. I worked in Madang in 1964 and it truly was a beautiful place. It seems to have lost a lot of the public works infrastructure and so doesn’t seem to be running as efficiently as it did in ‘colonial’ times.

Take a look at Jan Messersmith’s blog here......especially the main photo.


The Tour de France is still running (or riding) and I confess I don’t understand the whole thing. What I do know however, is that they must have more meat on their bums than I do.

Here is a pic of the 1942 Tour de France.

This morning we drove to Joondalup to look at a car for sale. It was advertised for sale for $1850. It is a Mazda 929, 1992 model. We have owned two of these cars in the past and I thought it might be a nice restoration project for Kev. It had a few 'dings' in the bodywork, the leather seats were a bit too tattered and the paintwork was very daggy. As well as that there were a few ghostly electrical problems where some things worked randomly. The airconditioner was also not functioning. The idea was sound, but the costs looked like being too much for me. I will continue to look for a better car at a more realistic price.

Class car with 4 wheel steering; electric everything. See here.

Old style divorce

A right wing Federal politician, Tony Abbott, has just outlined his idea for the great leap backwards to blame-game divorces. Read about it here.

When I was a young fella, some 50 years ago, I was a member of a group of Rover Scouts who would often go on a group outing to the movies on a Saturday night. One of our group would buy the scandal rag 'The Mirror' for pre-movie reading. The paper would be divided up amongst us and the hunt was on to find the juiciest divorce scandals the 'journos' could dredge up. In every issue there would be a photo of some hapless couple caught in bed in a hotel room or a car parked down by the river along with the detailed evidence brought before the divorce courts. At the time it was a taboo subject in polite society, but it took another 18 years before the state government changed the terms of divorce proceedings.
Now our Tony, being a God Fearing man, wants to bring it all back. Often these rabid moralists have a few skeletons in their cupboards. Does Tony?

I have been liasing with a lady from the W.A. Justice System arranging for a computer to be given to a 22 year old Aboriginal man who is at present in Hakea Prison. I have not asked what he is in prison for, but his mentor is hopeful that he will be bailed by next Monday and able to return home to his partner and five children. If he gets out of the big house I will deliver a computer and instruct him on its use. He is not of low intelligence, but as can be the case with many young aboriginal men, school was not a pleasant or important part of life and he has very basic communication skills. Could be a big ask to get him computer literate.

He has been enrolled in an Aboriginal educational program and has hopes of getting employment. I wish him every success, but he will be up against many other young people with better qualifications and communication skills. At least he will be getting government assistance for all his kids. It is very difficult to sift through the government documents, but it would seem that each child born gives the family a $5,000 cash benefit and a steady ongoing income for the family along with the unemployment benefits and rent assistance. Not too bad eh?

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.