Brisbane and beyond

'tis difficult to remember all the things we have done and seen over the past four days. Brisbane is a very cosmopolitan city with, compared to Perth, many seriously high rise buildings. The areas we have walked, were, it seems, rather closeted. All the people friendly malls we initially saw were peopled by business and lawyer-type folk. It was only yesterday when we got a little lost that we stumbled across the odd-people malls. They aren't bad 'dudes' but the are the Goths and Strangees of Brisbane. They didn't intimidate us as we shuffled past them and they would probably be nicer than the lawyers if we fell over....Oh yeah!?

We drove out to the burbs to visit a couple we knew in Papua New Guinea in the 70s. Romy worked on my staff at Popondetta Vocational Centre and after Independence when we returned to Australia, he and his family stayed on until 1986. Romy and Bella are Fillipino and they were wonderful people and friends when we were in PNG. This visit was a bit of a shock as they have both had major medical problems. Their kids have made good in Australia and are successful in their professions. Sad that Romy feels that he is finished...and it seems that he has every reason to think so. His memory is failing him and I think he feels that his kids are not too supportive. It will happen to lots of us. It was good to see them again and we all know that we won't see each other again. Sad!

When we returned to we went on a river cruise on the CityFerrry and the CityCat. It wasn't really a cruise, but a fare paying trip at $7.80 for the both of us for a day's travel on boats, buses and trains. Not too bad at all! The Brisbane River is a good trip. There are lots of ferry stations and lots to see, although most of the passengers would have nothing on their mind except the trials and tribulations of work in the big city. We saw a whole lot more.
On the trip back to North Quay ( 'key' to you non- nauticals) we stopped of at the wheel, a junior version of the London Eye. Not too bad!

I cannot remember when we visited the Cultural Centre on Southbank. And that it surely is! We viewed "Taim Bepoa" Thursday Island photo exhibit, the Year 12 student artworks and then the Hat Salon by Stephen Jones. Joan loved that exhibit, and I was one of only three men attending, the other two, like me were in tow with their wives. We had a coffee at the art gallery cafe and we spied a very unafraid, unworried and unspooked lizard. He/she is obviously a local as we saw another at the Roma Street Parklands later.

This morning we checked out and headed for Ipswich. First stop was the Railway Museum which was well presented and we were the only people for the first tour of the Steam exhibition. Ipswich was a major player in the Queensland Railway story. Well worth a visit!

After that we visited the Art Gallery where Joan wanted to see an historic quilt exhibition. After that we headed off towards the Gold Coast where we had booked into a nice hotel. About 50 kilometres from Ipswich Joan suggested we stop for some lunch and it was at this time that we realised that she had lost her purse containing wads of cash and all her cards. Panic! What to do? We had no money. We rang the Art Gallery in Ipswich and they were going to look for Joan's purse. We left our mobile No. and headed back to Ipswich. When we got back to the Gallery they told me that nothing had been found, so off to the cop shop. As it happened a little old lady...probably around our age, had handed it in...cash and cards. Whew!!!

We will make every effort to find out her details and at least thank her.

We made it to our hotel on the Gold Coast and all is well. More later.

Brisbane photos

A few Brisbane Pics until our next post.








A city resident















City contrasts



















Gotham City Brisbane













Thursday Island Dancers Brisbane central













The band..'been in a good paddock'











The Big Picture...a painting of Brisbane in the museum. It is accompanied by a nice book which dissects the painting naming parts of the scene.

Sorry the spacing is messy....I can't seem to fix it.

First Taste of Brisbane

First day in Brisbane and it is raining and overcast. We have been out for breakfast and had a look at the main commercial area of the city. Very impressive!

There are large, wide pedestrian areas with plenty of eateries. Just around the corner from the hotel is a small oasis in the city; a restaurant with lots of trees and greenery named Java Coast. It was recommended by a friend of Joans. We’ll try it out for lunch. Pic from our room on the 12th shows the rear of the Java Coast.













Departing from Perth yesterday was easy, but unfortunately we were given seats in the centre of the aircraft. The foot room was adequate but elbow room for the centre passenger; me, was very cramped when eating. We were in flight for over an hour and a half before being served lunch . The aircraft, a Boeing 767, was full and it seemed like there were only four stewards serving. We were placated with a second bottle of wine.

Four hours and fifty-two minutes is a long time with a screaming and nasty two year old performing non-stop Perth to Brisbane.. This lovely young boy continually slapped, punched and head-butted his young mother. It made us remember how good our two kids were on the many flights we had to make within Papua New Guinea and to and from annual leave to Perth.

Arriving at Brisbane we collected our bags and went to collect the hire car we had booked. When the insurance cover was explained to us we decided to take out the extra $34 dollars a day insurance to avoid massive charges if we had any sort of accident. Car rental in the U.S. is cheaper, less restrictive and more relaxed. That $34 was more than the daily car hire!

You can see that I am a bit of a TA and when we drove to our hotel, was a little peed off to find it cost $20. per day for parking. Joan soon told me to cool it, and today I have tried and seem to have calmed down a bit. I wont mention the small snack we had in the hotel dining room last night…the cost and the 15% surcharge.

First impressions of Brisbane. Very modern with a retention of lovely old buildings. People-friendly malls. Plenty of smokers…many more than seen in Perth. Perth has smokers out on the street at smoko and lunch times, but here it seems they are out at all times. This afternoon we are off to South Bank, culture central, museums etc etc..













Recycling: The Treasury Building is now Treasury Casino.



















The old among the new

Castaways Sculpture Awards

Yesterday we drove down to Rockingham to take a look at the annual 'Castaways' Sculpture Awards on the beach.

I am not big on art, but sculpture I find interesting. Here are a few of my favourites out of the 48 entries. I voted for the simplest exhibit which had the most impact on me.

'Once a King' is merely a stack of Jarrah firewood. The Jarrah tree is a mighty Western Australian hardwood which has, since the white settlement of Australia, supplied excellent timber for houses, bridges, wharves, small ships and boats and lately very expensive furniture. The Jarrah needs a little protection from those who would knock them down for railway sleepers.













Once a King



















Light Shadow













Extinctus















Part of 'The Sea's Sculpture'

Extinctus is made of old motor tyres and yes, the scales on the fish are sunglass lenses.

Joan's blog...here, has more pics.

PICC removal and new Chemotherapy

It is late today that Joan will be most grateful to have the PICC line removed for good. She will be on a different Chemo regime starting immediately. Instead if the infusion of three poisons every two weeks she will be getting an infusion of Avastin every three weeks through a vein in her hand and daily tablets of Xeloda. Side effects will be much the same losing a couple and gaining a couple. One she will get, is very red hands.


The oncologist told us that at this stage many patients get a 'chemo holiday', but not Joan. There are too many liver tumours to risk the holiday. He also told us of the discussion he had with a surgeon about removing the bowel cancer. They both agreed that the time lost in recuperating from bowel surgery would probably give the liver tumours new life. So she will be on permanent chemo unless we see a dramatic improvement. The blood marker has continued to come down and is now 500 from the initial 9,200.

We are off to Queensland for the PNG reunion on Monday. Away for 9 days.

This morning I received a package of ink cartridges from a supplier in Hong Kong. There are 14 chipped Canon compatible cartridges which cost A$28 including postage to our door. That is about half of one genuine cartridge. Poo to all the folks who look down on non-original cartridges. That is where brands like Canon, HP, Brother etc etc make their money: not on sales of the actual printers.

This blog has a few regular readers, but one in Mountain View, California is the most regular and most often. I suspect it is a relative who lives in California. Love to hear from him/her in a comment.

Cats and Dinosaurs

We have had a number of cats. We like cats, in fact Joan's sister wants to buy one for Joan when we return from Brisbane. I have reservations!

We have a neighbor's cat visit us regularly. We don't feed it and it still drifts by for a bit of a talk and leg rub. There are two other large cats who visit during the night and use our place for very noisy fights and a toilet. Most of the houses in this area probably don't have garden beds like ours and I guess the cats seek us out to do their thing(s). The fights are very annoying and go on until I get up and chase them off. The poo in the garden beds and vegetable plot is very annoying. Cats don't bury their poo too deeply and as I water my vegies, large lumps emerge from the ground like horror movie corpses. You may say that it's fertiliser, but just like dog turds they remain solid lumps of worthless....poo.

Last night there was a fight out side our rear door. They didn't stop when I shone a strong light on them. One was a large muscular looking Tabby and the other was an overweight Siamese. After I chased them off I collected a couple of handfuls of fur. Tabby 1 Siamese 0 although there were a few traces of Tabby fur in the heap.

On the weekend I purchased a second-hand A3 printer. It is an HP Deskwriter 9300. It was fitted with new cartridges and works like a charm. I have many vintage negatives to print large prints from. It cost $40.

I recently read where there is new theory about the demise of dinosaurs. This one says that an ice age did away with them..all of them. I think this cartoon could be the key to their extinction. Wouldn't want them fighting in your back yard!

Changing attitudes

In the previous blog I told of a Japanese Kokoda WW2 veteran who fessed up to eating flesh of the enemy to survive when the Japanese push to capture Port Moresby started to fall apart and supplies dwindled because of the Allies' control of the supply routes.

Yesterday I watched quite a few docos of the time and one of them was about war crime trials in 1945/6. One trial was of a Japanese soldier who was accused of eating the flesh of a dead Australian soldier. He was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging.

The change in attitude about cannibalism is interesting and probably changed after an air crash in the Andes mountains in 1972. The passengers and crew were not found and eventually the survivors turned to cannibalism to survive. They were all Catholics and some equated the act of cannibalism to the ritual of Holy Communion. Read about the crash and rescue here.

Eventually survivors were rescued and no charges were laid, probably because they weren't the enemy?

American Pie

It is ANZAC day today and recent newspapers have had stories of exploits of our military in two world wars and other 'minor' wars since Federation.

In the weekend edition of the Australian newspaper there was an article featuring a Japanese veteran of the Kokoda battles. He returned to Papua New Guinea in 1979 and remained there until 2005 searching out and collecting bones of buried Japanese troops on and near the Kokoda Track.

In an interview with the Australian's reporter, Ross Coultard, Nishimura made an admission that to survive he had eaten the flesh of enemy troops, but he claims that he ate the flesh of Americans only. Was this a case of supply and demand or just being careful not to offend Australians?

We recently attended a meeting with our financial advisor in West Perth. West Perth is the financial and medical district and it has large parking bays, no doubt to allow for BMWs and Jags and the hourly rate is $2.90 per hour, more than most other areas around Perth.
Room enough for a Lambo?

It seems that we weathered the financial crisis rather well and we have enough cash to see us out. When the man asked how we were, Joan told him about her fight with the Big C and he immediately launched into a plan for the future and I had to tell him that we didn't yet want to go down that path.

Domestic expresso coffee makers

We decided we would join all the other financial crisis stimulus packagers and buy a coffee maker. Friends bought one at a swap meet and they got it for around $10 and claim it works well.

We paid $188.00 for ours and as soon as we tipped it out of the box (that's what you have to do with tight polystyrene packaging) Joan washed it and we made our first cup(s) of coffee. When you load the coffee grounds there are two receptacles...one for 1 cup and another for 2 cups. What we didn't realise, not being frequenters of the Cappuccino Strip in Fremantle, is that the cups they are referring to are actually eggcups. Our regular coffee mugs don't fit under the outlet. So we are doomed to try and take our morning tablets with a dribble of coffee.

A couple of days ago, a welfare person I know and sometimes help by donating computers to some of her clients, rang asking if I could help get her PC working as she had lots of important data she was desperate to save. I told her that I can operate PCs but don't know poo from clay about diagnosing faults etc. Never-the-less she pleaded with me to take a look. I grabbed some tools and a spare monitor and when I arrived saw that the computer, the CPU, was running but the monitor light wasn't on. Changed the monitor and all is well. She wanted to pay me and I refused any payment from a person who helps others. I did stress that changing the monitor was a lucky one and I did not want others to think that I am a PC technician who does freebies.

Surprisingly Australian?

I managed to replace all the swollen capacitors in the eMac I was trying to repair, but they were not the problem. It has been demolished and all the good bits saved as spares.

Last night on TV there was a program named The Fabulous Story of Poop. It was crap! Literally!

Animal, Insect and birds were covered...not one mention about human crap. The Poo has many uses it seems....perfumes, medicines, building materials and food etc.

Dung Beetles got a honourable mention and we saw closeup footage of them getting stuck into cow patties...Yum!

The presenter claimed that researchers refer to poo as Roses.

I get a bit confused with signs. When I see a sign for a Secondhand Shop I wonder if it is selling second hands or is it a second-hand store ? On a packet of bacon this morning I noticed that the manufacturer announced that the contents are 'Surprisingly Australian'. Help me here...what does that mean.

Swollen Capacitors

Around 2000-2002 there were many computers recalled because of faulty capacitors. Dell and Acer had the most call backs. Others included, IBM, Apple and HP.

It was as a result of a bit of industrial espionage. Seems as though a Japanese engineer jumped ship and went to China taking the speccies and formula for the electrolyte with him. Unfortunately he didn't get it quite right and there were massive failures.

I am repairing an Apple eMac at the moment with swollen capacitors. This eMac was built in China around that time and has 5 bulging capacitors. I have bought replacement caps and just have to remove the damaged ones and re-solder the new ones in and reassemble the machine and hope that it works. It is not a biggy; I have other eMacs, but I thought I would try out my soldering skills.

The capacitors cost about 14c.

Some pics....This shows good capacitors with flat tops
The capacitors here have swollen tops.

Photo restoration

When visiting Joan's uncle and aunt last week I gave myself a job to repair a poor photo of her grandparents. Joan's aunty is right into the family tree. I said I would give it a go with Photoshop.

Restoring badly damaged photos is like trying to make money out of repairing computers...sometimes you can discover some small fault quickly and walk out with the cash in no time. Restoring photos can be pretty easy also..if there is little damage to the original.

I have never charged for looking at someone's computer and some of the machines I have tried to fix would have cost lots even at 50c per hour.

I spent about an hour on this photo. It is not a great job, but at least they have one that is easily recognisable as the rellies.

The Original

Converted to B&W

Restored (of sorts)
The difficult jobs, when large parts of the photo are missing or torn, rely on a bit of artistic licence.

When this photo was taken, in the 1950s oldies still didn't smile in formal photographs, however I get the feeling that Joan's Nan was sick and maybe close to her time.

Bring out your dead

I got rid of a lot of worthless computer gear over the weekend....computers, monitors and printers etc etc. The Fremantle City Council had a bring in your dead day and I loaded the trailer up with about 40 items and headed into Freo territory collecting my brother en route.

We don't live in the Fremantle Council area and shouldn't be using their facilities, but my bro does live in the Freo City area and I had him along so he could tell the man where he lived. As it happened the man didn't ask where we lived and I now have a relatively spacious workshop where I can walk around without tripping over piles of CD drives, Hard Disks, monitors and computers.

The Fremantle Council also has a weekend collection depot manned by a bloke a bit younger than me. He also doesn't know that I live outside the city boundaries. We chat each time I take some stuff there and we have become quite good friends. He hasn't asked me where I live yet, but I suspect that he will one day and I will have to fess up. At worst he could tell me to stay away from his operation..or be nice to his new-found friend and let me continue to visit with my discards. Our own landfill site for the City of Cockburn (that's pronounced coburn!) is quite a way from our house and they don't like taking computer gear especially monitors which have to be shipped off to Holland for safe disposal.

Joan is to have a blood test tomorrow and on Wednesday, round 8 of Chemotherapy. In another fortnight after round 8 round 9 will be the last of infusion through the PICC line and that will be removed and further chemo will be administered in tablet form. The nasty chemo ( Oxyplatin) is to be stopped and Joan should get relief from its nasty side effects.

Dead iMacs

Just when I thought I could wind down the computer repair projects I was given four iMacs by W.A. Newspapers Pty Ltd. They are in various states of disrepair and they thought it was better that I have a go repairing them rather than sending them off to landfill.

The are quite recent machines, but two of them have been dropped on the floor of the Graphics Department of 'The West' and they don't bounce. The hard drives have been removed from all of them so that their data is secure.

We have a later model of the same line of iMacs and I am looking forward to getting inside them and seeing if I am lucky enough to get one or two working out of the four.

Last week I had a request for a couple of machines for two aboriginal women. One is quite young and has established an Aboriginal modelling agency. It is in its infancy, but the Welfare Officer I work with hopes that it will be successful. The other woman has severe depression and wants a computer to get on the net and play games. I have two good machines ready to deliver as soon as I get addresses.
So that's what is behind the screen.

York, Western Australia

Joan's birthday on April 2nd saw us invited up north of the river for lunch with her sister Dorothy and husband Mike. The restaurant is named Spinnakers and we enjoyed a very nice lunch watching boats,large and small, moving around Hillarys Boat Harbour.

Later Joan had her chemo pump removed at St. John's and she was free for the remainder of the fortnight. When we got home we decided to broach a bottle of Moet which was a present to me for my 70th in November. Hmmn...we think Australian $7.00 sparkling bottle-fermented wine is better! Martin, our son gave Joan another French champagne for her birthday and although it was much less expensive, was better than the Moet.

Yesterday we decided to go for a drive to York for an antique show and photography exhibition. It was a lovely day and a nice drive of around 100 Kilometres. With some recent rains there was a touch of green to fields en route.

York was the first colonial town established outside of Perth and Fremantle and has a wonderful colonial feel to it with many old stone buildings, interesting shops, a motor museum,a few nice pubs and public buildings. Sorry we didn't take any pics.


Not so long ago we did think of putting an offer on a magnificent house in York on 3.5 acres. Had we have done so and been successful, we would be doing lots of travelling on a fortnightly basis for chemotherapy sessions in Perth.

Latest CT scan results

Yesterday was the start of round 7 chemo. We arrived at St John's Cancer Ward at 1.45pm and got some good news from the oncologist: the tumours have again showed reduction in size since the last scan 2 months ago and no new lesions have popped up. Also the 'tumours' in the lungs have not changed either in size or number and the oncologist thinks that they may well be granulomas as suggested after the last CT Scan. He is pleased with the results so far...so are we!

After two more rounds of Folfox6, he will have the PICC line removed and Joan will only have to go to the hospital every three weeks to get an infusion of Avastin, a drug that inhibits the formation of cancer tumour blood vessels and take Flouroucil in tablet form. He is to stop the Oxalplatin which has as side effects, white blood cell reduction, nausea, tingling in fingers and severe reaction to cold and heat and hair loss along with a few other nasty bits.

He is still considering surgery of the bowel cancer, but will meet with the surgeon and discuss the benefits as all chemo would be suspended for 6-8 weeks if surgery goes ahead.

Our trip to Queensland in early May will be easier without having to worry about blood tests and flushing the PICC line whilst interstate.

We are feeling pretty good today!

Technobabble

We have been very busy over the last couple of weeks....I think I might go back to work for a rest.

An Aboriginal lady asked for help with her PC laptop last week. It presented with the Blue Screen of Death and would not do anything. She had a lot of data on it which she needed to modify and print over the weekend for a submission. Whilst I don't have any great skills in the PC repair business I said I would take it to a friend and we would see what we could do to restore her machine.

We (mainly Rob) managed to drag the data off the hard drive with some magic software and reload WindowsXP and the data. That took some three hours of pretty intense grey matter pressure. The disk used to reload XP wasn't the one that came with that particular computer and that is where the fun began. Unless you use the original disk, the drivers for things like the USB port, Video control etc etc have to be found on the net and loaded separately. It all worked and I gave the machine back to the lady vowing to stick to what I know well....Macs.

Yesterday I went to Rob's school, where his IT students had refurbished a stack of 10 PCs for an Aboriginal group. My job was the clean up the cases, crank 'em up to see if everything worked and search to see if the drivers were all there. Three machines needed driver downloads, so we configured another three machines from the dozens Rob has in his classrooms. All done and they will be delivered today.

Enough technobabble for now.

Today is the day we find out if the CT scan done last week shows continuing decrease in Joan's tumour size. She has around 30 tumours in her liver and the last scan a month ago suggested 'Small, but significant tumour size reduction'. Today also sees the start of chemo round 7. After having round 5 delayed a week because of low white blood cell count and the next round reduced because of that we are a bit apprehensive that the dosage reduction may not give the same benefits. Joan is ready to tell the oncologist that she would like to get the full dose if he thinks that is necessary to continue the good results. Who are we to tell the man what should be done, especially when on a trial?

Hello dementia

This morning I made a cooked breakfast and we sat down and read the newspaper and took our tablets with coffee. Well, I took my tablets, which happened to be Joan's tablets. They are quite different physically and chemically to mine and during today her diuretic tablet has been working well. I don't know what else is in store for me in the next couple of days.....will I start developing breasts?

Today we had a small family gathering to celebrate our son Martin's 39th birthday. He wasn't too happy about it at first, but warmed to it after a bit of common-interest conversation. Helen, our daughter and James her partner took the opportunity to look at a couple of houses for sale nearby. The houses turned out to be reasonable, but the base price was over a half a million dollars. I must investigate relative incomes and house prices when we first bought in the 1960s. It may well be that house and land prices compared to wages and salaries have not really gone up that much over the years. I know that vehicle prices have come down considerably over the last 30 years. Similarly, has the price of fuel versus wages soared in recent years? As a youngun, I recall petrol prices bit hard even though a gallon of fuel was only a couple of shillings. Stop whinging folks!

We carnivores

Sometime in the late 1940s I remember being at my grandparent’s farm at Toolibin in the W.A. wheatbelt. I must have been about 7 years of age and I clearly remember my grandfather and some other men readying a horse team for winter ploughing in preparation for seeding. They had a John Deere steel-wheeled tractor in a bush material shed and I guess it wasn’t used because of petrol shortages. Years later when I was about 14, I recall two men arriving at the farm to collect that tractor and load it on a big truck and take it away. Even after many years of it sitting idle in the shed, they managed to start it and drive it up a big ramp onto the truck.

I cannot remember seeing the horses working again after that first time. My grandparents bought a large diesel International Harvester tractor and the horses were put out to pasture.

Every holiday when I stayed at the farm I would go to the horse paddock fence and the huge draught horses would rush up to me at such a speed that I couldn’t imagine how they could stop in time and not crash through the fence and me.

One holiday I went to see the horses and they were not there. A bit later in a stand of gum trees I found their sunbleached bones. Practicality deemed them to be pig food. I was shocked. They were mammals like us!

Farming has a different outlook on such things. When a sheep was to be slaughtered for the ‘house’, it was trussed up in a wheelbarrow and its throat slit and left to bleed to death.

We sensitive carnivores should maybe take a tour of an abattoir

Bertholt Brecht

I have just returned from Perth City where I dropped off Joan at Royal Perth Hospital. She is having a CT scan and we are hopeful that there will be good news of significant tumour reduction in her liver.

She is going to catch a train back to Fremantle and I will collect her from Fremantle Railway Station. She rings me when she is about ten minutes away from Freo. Mobile phones are just so convenient.

I watched a movie on the weekend...not bad! It dealt with German troops in Russia and there was plenty of blood and guts and the usual honorable soldier on both sides. In the titles there was a quote by Bertolt Brecht.

Don't rejoice in his defeat, you men
For although the World stood up and stopped the bastard,
The Bitch who bore him is in heat again.

Brecht wrote many plays and poems. Read about him here.

Sculpture by the Sea

Saturday afternoon we went to Cottesloe Beach to see the Sculpture by the Sea exhibition. It is an annual event which attracts loads of people. There were around 100 installations and we tried to see them all. When we later looked at the catalogue it seems that we missed quite a few. Maybe we should have studied the catalogue first? My faves were the horses.

We were there just on sunset so the pics have a bit of a suntan.

Yesterday we had a visit from a couple of friends, one of whom we both taught back in the late 70s at Rockingham SHS. Robbie and Huw brought their baby, Ripper, a Spoodle. Ripper is a Spaniel/Poodle cross and extremely bright. Rob and Huw have obviously spent lots of time teaching him words which he recognises. At the mention of the word 'cat' Ripper jumps to attention and races off looking for the cat. Fortunately, the cat who visits us wasn't in the yard.
It was a most pleasant afternoon with lots of good conversation, food and drinks. Thanks guys for being good company and staying longer than required when visiting oldies.



Rob, Huw and Ripper.

Medicalese

The results from the ultrasound scan were good although hard to believe. I am amazed at the interpretation of the specialist who reads the fuzzy pictures of my internal bits and can make such pronouncements. Liver: normal size, Gall Bladder: good, Spleen and Pancreas: normal , Kidneys: normal size,shape and texture.
Is that my liver or am I pregnant? Click to enlarge to make a diagnosis.

Of course the report didn't use those simple descriptions, they were couched in medicalese.....echotexture, intrahepatic/extrahepatic, parenchymal, lymphadenopathy etc etc.

Joan is due to have the chemo pump removed today then she has 12 days without chemo...just the side effects. It is in this typical 12 day period that we will be travelling to Brisbane for a PNG teachers' reunion in May.

Madang Ples Bilong Mi

Joan is today starting round 6 of chemo. Each time we front up to the oncologist we worry that the blood test will show a low white blood cell count and void the session.

I follow a blog by an American fellow who has lived in Madang PNG for lots of years. He has a boat and is an avid diver and photographer. His blog.. features lots of photos of Madang sunsets and dawns as well as great underwater photos of fish and reef coral. Well worth a look. The blog is called Madang, Ples Bilong Mi.

Recently he told of almost being scammed by what he later discovered was the London Face Book Scam. The scam goes along these lines. Scammers set up fake FaceBook sites with details of interests and lots of photos etc. They become friends and correspond with the target on FaceBook.
Then comes the scam. In this case, the young woman (?) is stranded in London and urgently needs a loan of 1,250 pounds Sterling. There is the promise to pay the money back as soon as she gets back to the states. I think this is the essence of the 'Confidence Trick'.

An Upper Abdomen Scan

Yesterday I had an UltraSound of my upper abdomen. The young lady who did the job took lots of pictures, probably about 30+, and seemed to be concentrating on an area where my liver lives. When she was finished I asked if everything looked OK. She told me that radiographers were not allowed to comment, that was the job of the Doctor who analyzed the scans. I tried a new tack...'Do you think my GP is likely to ring me in the next few days?' to which she replied, 'I doubt it.' Which was pretty good news.

I had to fast for 8 hours before the scan and in the 30 minutes before I headed off to the Radiography centre had to drink a litre of water. I can't even drink a litre of beer over 30 minutes.

Last bit of medical stuff...... I have had some kidney pains for a few months and my GP sent me off to a local nephrologist. He sent me off for blood and urine tests and the results showed protein levels in the urine above normal. Several visits later he wrote to my GP suggesting that there is a link to the kidney problem with a possible contra-indication with Nexium which I take for acid reflux. He must have looked that up on Google; everyman's medical book. So I'm off to see the GP on Thursday and he is going to give me an alternative drug for acid reflex.

Don't you love getting old?

Hanging Up

Last night there was a re-run of a 2000 movie Hanging Up. The TV guide critic gave it one and a half stars. I liked it and gave 3 stars.

It is a comedy/drama with a good cast...Walter Mattau, Lisa Kudrow, Diane Keaton and Meg Ryan.
It is sort of a comedic dumbed-down On Golden Pond and is about three daughters coming to terms with their father's demise in dementia.

It reminded me of our friend, John who is in care with his companion Dementia. John is neither cranky nor violent like the Matthau character and occasionally he shows a glimmer of his old self. I am visiting him to day to give him a hair trim. I will be surprised if he recognises me.

His wife, Joy wrote this about her lost husband John....

Dementia

Dementia is a cruel disease
It steals from families - we're one of these
It stole our loving Dad and friend
And made us feel it was the end.

He walks all day - is he aware?
With a faraway look that is elsewhere
As he walks up and down the Nursing Home
Does he realize he is so alone?

Is he looking for something he knows is lost?

Does he remember his former life
And is trying to find his loving wife.
Can you imagine a greater loss
Or a heavier burden to carry this cross?

Our beloved man is there no more,
Just a shell behind an empty door,
Dementia has stolen him away
But we remember a different day.

Scuplture on the Canning River

Friday was a busy day for both of us. I delivered two computers to a young Maori family north of the river. The younger son is in our daughter Helen's class at Padbury Primary School. They were delighted with both machines. The one for the kids is a slot loading iMac running an older operating system OS 9. I loaded 9 on it because I have been given dozens of great educational games on CDs. They come from Castlereagh School, a government school which caters for severely disabled children. Not many people know about Castlereagh and it should be given acknowledgment for the great job the staff does with their charges.

It is sad that because of a government dictate computers must not be held longer than 4 years, and so, the fleet of iMacs Castlereagh ran had to be dumped in favour of brand new PCs which don't run all those educational programmes. I would have thought that it would have been OK for the school to keep a few iMacs specifically to run these educational programmes....but no.

In the evening we attended a sculpture opening at Deepwater Point on the Canning River hosted by the City of Melville with lots of free drinks and food. The sculptures were good, especially one installation (see, I am getting with the arty terminology) which was completely made from discarded plastic drink containers. To quote a Peter Seller's line to be said in a strong Scottish Accent...'I noo say little aboot the Arts, but ah was soootably imprrressed ba what-a saw'

A few pics of the plastic marine life. Click them to enlarge.


Joan is about to embark on round six of chemo next week. Another six after that in the Folfox6 regime. What happens after that we have not been told. There is another CT scan at the end of the month and we hope to see more reduction in tumour size. All the bookings for the Queensland trip are made and we hope that the chemo does not make her too sick to travel.

Kopi Luwak

Today's news presented a couple of interesting articles. President Susilo Bambang YUDHOYONO of Indonesia is making a state visit to Australia. He, like a recent Phillipine President, is a bit of a crooner and Prime Minister Rudd presented him with an Australian electric guitar. BangBang reciprocated by giving the PM some Kopi Luwak (civet predigested coffee beans). Read about them here.

How on earth did he get them through quarantine? The Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, Sir Michael Somari had to run the gauntlet when he last made a state visit to Australia and had to remove his sandals at Brisbane airport. I guess Customs thought there might have been a bomb in the soles? The Indonesian population would be a bit cranky with Australia if he was subjected to any Customs scrutiny and they might launch a Jihad.

Another story was about the birth of a baby elephant at Toronga Park Zoo in Sydney. TV footage showed zoo keepers tending the baby whilst mother looked on. The babe was thought to be still -born and the keepers were most surprised when it turned out..literally, to be alive and well. It reminded me of a cow we had when I was manager of Bainyik Vocational Centre in Papua New Guinea. Our cow was the nicest animal and let all the students cuddle her. We had her mated with a Brahman bull and watched as she approached delivery of a calf. One day I was driving past the cow paddock and noticed a newborn calf. Jeep skidded to a halt and I jumped out and climbed through the barb wire fence to congratulate mum. She wasn't elephant-like and put the head down and butted me into the barbed wire fence. Shocked and scratched I made a hasty retreat. I wouldn't fiddle with a newborn elephant within trunk distance from her mum!

Worrying Pain

I have had a steady pain just below my sternum for about a week and at odd times it hits me hard. My GP thinks it is gastric reflux stirring up a Hiatus Hernia. At my age and thinking about Joan's cancer, I get a bit worried about such pains. He thinks the trouble may be a fungal (?) attack and prescribed a drug called Nilstat. I am also off to have an ultrasound.

I have had a few ultrasounds and I'm damned if I can see anything when I look at the films. I can sort of see a foetus when the US is shown on TV, but to diagnose something from a mass of fuzzy dots is not in my training....naturally!

Earlier in the afternoon I visited my elderly computer student Vera. She is sort of getting the hang of sending an email message...sort of. Today we sent several messages to my home and we wrote down each step. Attachments are a long way down the track. Just as well I don't charge as I have made five trips to her home and spent many hours going over the simplest of things. Maybe I am not a good teacher? Today I introduced her to eBay and Google. I think she will enjoy Google.

Room with a view

On Friday I had a Pinball repair man come and take a look at our machine. He is based in East Perth but had a job to do near our place. He worked on the machine for about an hour and a half and replaced several important bits and did a general tune up and clean for a grand total of $130. Bargain!
Yesterday evening we attended a two family show at my nephew's luxury suite on the 14th floor of a tower at Burswood, near the casino. Bruce bought the unit for $1M from the plans and he is back with his wife from the U.S. for a visit and to sell the unit. It's on the market for $1.2M and he has had one offer this last week. The views are fantastic looking West to the city and down the river. Interestingly his unit on the 14th floor is actually the 13th floor, but the builders were instructed to not name the floor the 13th, should it deter Chinese buyers.
Looking down river

We left reasonably early and others including my brother Graham and his partner, kicked on. When I got up this morning there was a message from Graham on the phone. He was ringing from the high rise and asked me to ring back. There were a few giggles in the background so I thought he was just joshing me. It turns out that as they tried to leave the building they went through a wrong door and were locked in. Fortunately, after a half hour or more, a resident was returning home and used the combination lock to let them out.

Vintage Scam?

Today we received a letter from the Readers Digest informing us that a $55,000 prize has already been drawn and it seems that we, along with thousands of others, have been given the chance of entering the numbers shown in the box to possibly match those already selected by the good folk at Reader's Digest.
Click the pic to enlarge.

I didn't think that anyone read the Digest anymore?

'Tis a fine line between scam and spam and this one is pure vintage. I can remember such letters from RD as far back as the 70s...probably earlier.

It isn't quite as simple as it reads. To qualify for the draw it seems that one has to subscribe to the Readers Digest to be eligible to have a crack at the cash.

I know it isn't as crooked as a Nigerian scam which relies on people being greedy and gullible, but I bet it still sucks in plenty of people.

Back on track with chemo

Joan is back on track with her Chemotherapy and today had a full dose of rat poison and brought home 'her' pump to infuse the last 100ml of fluorouracil over 48 hours.

We were concerned that the low white blood cell count would not have improved enough to recommence chemo. Fortunately all was well. Another good bit of news was that the CEA tumour marker (CarcinoEmbryonic Antigen) has once again fallen from the initial 9,100 to 1,300. Got to be good news there!

We also asked about our chances of going to Brisbane in May for a Papua New Guinea reunion. He reckons there will be no problem doing that so we will go ahead and make plane, car and hotel bookings for a week away.

Our daughter Helen teaches a child who is 'not the sharpest tool in the shed' and she suggested that I give the family a computer for educational games and internet connection. I have set up two Macs, one with an older operating system which has dozens of really good educational packages and another for Mum and Dad to hook up to the net. I talked to the family tonight and they are really stoked. I will deliver them next week and do a quick instructional course on their use.

At the same time I deliver those machines I will deliver another more up-market Mac to Vera's sister who needs something to occupy her so that she doesn't scoot off to the Casino. That is not my assessment of the situation...blame Vera.

Technology for the Young

This afternoon I drove out to Vera's house to give her another lesson on computer operation. Vera is an elderly (jeez, she is only three years older than me!) Aboriginal lady. I use the term 'Lady' because she is a lady....nice and pleasant company.

She has almost no experience with computers and I had forgotten how difficult it is to remember the steps to do things, like use a word processor, log onto the net, use an email program and Google for information. We went through all those processes and I wrote up instructions for each process and showed her how to make a photocopy, scan a document or picture and either save it or print it. Photoshop is far down the road yet.

Over the weekend when we had two kids stay over at our place I saw again what youth has that we oldies don't...immediate understanding of the technology or the where-with-all to nut it out; quickly.

Oldie get thee to a retirement village.

Young Nomads

We have had an overnight visit by Sean, Denise, Cody and Bae.

I taught Sean at Rockingham SHS in the late 70s and we have kept in contact over the years catching up when Sean comes home to W.A. or when we travel to Sydney town.

They sold up their house in Sydney’s west and bought a large caravan and 4WD and have been doing the young nomad thing for almost two years. Denise home-schools their two children and she has done a great job, and it shows because they are quite intellectual and can talk on a broad range of topics. Their travels around Australia has given them an education they wouldn’t have had sitting in a school classroom. I am guessing that Cody is about 10 and Bae is probably 8.

Cody is an avid reader and has the full collection of Andy Griffith’s children’s books. He went to the Writers’ Festival at UWA today with a pile of books to get autographed by Andy, but it seems that several hundred other people had the same idea. Haven’t heard if he was successful in meeting his idol and getting his books signed.

Bae also reads Andy’s books by borrowing from Cody’s library. Cody has made a library card for her and she is probably fined if she doesn’t return a book on time.

Sean is doing part-time lecturing at Edith Cowan University and is loving it. He did a post graduate Dip.Ed a couple of years ago with the aim of getting into teaching. Travelling around Australia has given him a taste of what relief teachers have to put up with. Generally, high school students give relief teachers a hard time so he is delighted to teach adults at a university.

They have no immediate plans to settle in one place again, but that will of course come to be some day.

It was a most pleasant visit with good friends and very nice kids.

WW2 Saboteurs

Being seventy years of age, I have a tenuous connection with WW2. I taught in Papua New Guinea for almost ten years and have a keen interest in the battles and characters of the war in Australia and Papua New Guinea.

My home town of Fremantle has a very interesting connection to the Pacific war with a major U.S. Submarine base located here.

Recently I was reading an interview with a WW2 Australian pilot who was stationed in Papua during the war. The interview was part of an author's research for a book named "The Guns of Mischu'. The interview can be read here.

In the interview, the pilot recounts the sabotage of 19 Liberator bombers at an Australian base in Queensland during the war. The Liberators were Australian Air Force planes and I cannot understand how such sabotage was effected by Australians at war with the Japanese.

Were the saboteurs being paid by Japanese agents or were they anti-war people? They were obviously working on the base when the sabotage was committed.

Maybe it was along the lines of unionists who refiused to load supply ships carrying urgent supplies to Australian soldiers at war because of a pay dispute?

I am not particulary right wing, but in my 70 years on this place I have endured quite a few hardships and intimidatory tactics by trade unions.

No Chemo today

We headed out to St. John's Hospital in Subiaco early this morning and when we attended the Oncologist's rooms he told us that Joan's white blood cell count was too low to have chemo. She was allowed to get the Avastin which doesn't knock the bone marrow around. Avastin has the specific task of blocking blood flow to the cancer tumours. So she has a week off chemo to build up the white cells before chemo next Wednesday.

Although we were disappointed that Joan didn't get her chemo, we did get a copy of the last CT scan which suggests that the lung lesions may not be metastases, and could well be granulomas. That would be a good thing as then there would be just the liver and bowel cancer tumours to deal with.

I recall an open day at Leederville Technical College when I attended it many many years ago where a welcome notice greeted visitors at the entrance to the Science Department with............
Secretions and Granulomas and Much Metabolism

Our new cryo oven and Induction cooktop have been installed. The electrician had to bring in a heavy cable to handle the extra power needed for the cooktop and in doing that had to drop the cable down an exterior cavity wall. He drilled a hole into the cavity wall where he figured the cable would be, but miscalculated and actually drilled through the wrong wall and ended up making a large hole in our bedroom wall. He did say he was sorry, but didn't reduce the $300 bill. Both the oven and the cooktop are working well, but there are a few things to learn about operating and cleaning both of them.

Harry's Hardware

Harry’s hardware is really called Attadale Hardware and Harry has been running it seven days a week for 25 years serving the good people of Attadale.

The store is a mere 100m2 and packed with goodies to rival Bunnings and other monster stores. Harry doesn’t do lawnmowers, edgers, whipper-snippers and other petrol or electric garden tools….he leaves the warranty problems on such gear to places like Bunnings.

I have known Harry for around 15 years and actually taught both his lovely daughters at Willetton SHS.

He has an incredible gift of remembering names, number plates and telephone numbers. Of his roughly 1,000 loyal customers he reckons he remembers about 98% of their names and this shows when one visits Harry’s Hardware. It is certainly good business when a business proprietor addresses you by name as you enter their store.

People come back and don’t quibble about prices when they get good advice on a job or product. Harry even lends out his personal tools to home handymen and gals to ensure they get the job done with the least hassle.

We are shareholders in Bunnings and because of that we hope the Bunnings empire prospers, however if you are after some long out of date bit, Harry either has it or can get it for you. He is one of the very few hardware stores who will sell you individual screws etc rather selling a blister pack.

Because of Harry's location at some distance from the big hardware stores and the personal service shoppers get, his store is not going to be squeezed out by the big boys.

I’m more than a bit sorry that we no longer live close to HH.

Insurance adjusters

This morning Joan is off to St John's hospital to have her PICC line flushed and redressed. She is also going to drop in on her GP with a letter from our travel insurance company. When Joan was diagnosed with advanced bowel, liver and lung cancer in December, we cancelled a cruise we were booked on in January and Joan commenced Chemotherapy almost immediately. We made a claim for refund of the fares which was supported by a document from her GP outlining the reasons and the diagnosis.

The letter from the insurance company asks for a further detailed report from the GP showing all medications, treatment and advice given to Joan over the 90 day period from 14/06/2009 - 14/09/2009. Insurance Adjusters!

Today we are having a new oven and glass top induction cook-top delivered. We were sick of cleaning the many surfaces of a gas cook-top. The induction cook top is amazing. Where the cooking pot stands, only the pot gets hot. Paper towelling can be used under the pot without any fear of it catching on fire. Can't wait to get cooking on that!

Senile regression

Pauline Hanson is grabbing doogs* and leaving Australia to live in the UK. She is known throughout Australia as the woman who owned a fish and chip shop (and that's no shame!) who ran for Federal Parliament on a platform of anti- immigration, mainly directed at Asian immigration and formed the One Nation Party. Her party and policies appealed to a wide range of 'real Aussies' who were a bit afraid of the 'Yellow Peril'.

Her success was the one reason that the two main parties in Federal Parliament sort of worked together to put her down. It worked. She never got back into politics and is now going to become an emigrant herself, heading off to the UK which has no problems with immigration...oh yeah?

Methinks she has found a British boyfriend. She should settle somewhere in the Midlands of England...say Midsommer ,where there is nary a dark face and copious murders are committed for reasons as simple as a grating Australian accent. Look out Pauline.

This morning I was watering my small vegetable patch and noticed that my Silver Beet seeds have 'shot'. I was so pleased that I told Joan of the event. Is this old age regression? I felt like a Year 1 kid seeing his first seeds germinate in the class science project. Calm down Kev; the bugs will get them before they are half matured.

I cannot believe that growers of 'organic' vegetables don't use some insecticide to prevent losing their crop. I would like a pest free garden without insecticide, but don't believe it can really be achieved. Tell me I'm wrong.

* Grabbing Doogs is from games of marbles in the Australian schoolyard. When the bell for the end of recess or lunch was rung the players grabbed as many marbles (doogs) as they could and kept them.

Busy Saturday

Well, I managed to get the iBook laptop open again and found that I had indeed loosened a cable with all my fiddling when replacing the DVD ROM. It runs like a Buick now. I reckon I now know most of the tricks to repairing an Apple iBook....but hope never to have to do it again. Brain strain!

Joan is still going well except for several side effects of the chemotherapy. She is extremely sensitive to cold and hot things and food. Yesterday her finger tips went purple and painful. I rationalise it by saying that I too would have side effects if I started ingesting lots of rat poison. Don't think that helped much though.

Yesterday evening we went to a picnic in the Park at Wireless Hill with some friends. Three of them originated in Trinidad or Barbados. Their accents are a strange mix of sing-song West Indian with a smattering of Canadian. To shut ones eyes and listen, we could have been sitting and talking to a group of West Indian cricketers. One lady was terrified of birds which was a bit daunting for her as there were quite a few bold ravens, mudlarks and magpies waiting for scraps. It was a pleasant evening with good conversation.

Wireless Park is on a largish hill near the Swan River in Applecross. It was the site of an International Radio Station and is now natural bush parkland, a telecommunications museum and a local AM radio station. Nice spot!

Earlier in the day I delivered a computer to a couple who live in the Northern Coastal suburb of North Beach. They were most appreciative of the gift and I am sure it will serve them well.

From there I went to Hillaries to brother-in law Mike's place to give him some help with his garden reticulation system, his new iPod Touch and his voice amplifier system. Mike has advanced Parkinsons disease and was once a very capable techie, but Parkinsons has robbed him of most of that. It must be a soul destroying condition not to be able to do simple things that once came so easy.

The voice amplifier problem was solved, but Mike's voice is so weak that I doubt that it will help much. It certainly makes his laboured breathing easily heard. The iPod was eventually loaded up with music, but Mike's PC didn't have the firewall and virus protection turned on and the way it was playing up I suspect a few bugs have taken up residence and need cleaning out. The retic system was an impossible job for me as Mike had disconnected about 12 color-coded wires and replaced them in different positions. He hadn't made a diagram of their relative positions and the combinations of possibilities are beyond my mathematical abilities. I recommended that he get 'the man' out to rewire it.

A wrong diagnosis

Joan's sinus infection was rediagnosed by the oncologist as an abscess on a tooth. He suggested Joan visit her dentist and an ex-ray showed it was indeed an abscess. At the time we couldn't believe that it was a sinus infection as there was a large painful lump on her upper front gum.

The dentist prescribed Metronidazole and when I had it dispensed at the pharmacy it had a sticker on the pack warning not to drink alcohol, during or four days after, completing the course. I had read that alcohol and antibiotics were a bit of a furphy, but it seems that two antibiotics, Flagyl and Metronidazole definitely don't like alcohol and will make the drinker very sick. I'm not taking either antibiotic!

I collected a DVD ROM for the iBook that I recently acquired. In return I gave David his two bars of chocolate and a couple of Brownes Dairy Mocha drinks. I also gave him a MacIntosh SE30 which he didn't have in his collection of Mac history.

The Apple iBook has to be one of the more difficult laptops to pull apart. I followed detailed instructions on a web page and managed to get the new drive in and all the dozens of minute screws back in the right places (I think). The computer started up and the DVD drive worked well, however the PowerPack won't charge the battery. I may have missed replacing a cable or something. That means I will have to take it apart again to have a look. Most frustrating!

Round 4 of Folfox6

Yesterday Joan started her round four of Folfox6 chemotherapy. We had an interview with the oncologist before chemo and he said that her blood tests were all good...red and white cells and liver function good! Also the cancer marker had dropped from 9,100 to 2,000+. Still a long way to go as the norm is around 5.

Because the Ivy Suite was heavily booked Joan was ushered up to a single room in the same building. The administration of the chemo this time was a little different, the Avastin, which is usually administered last was infused first. Joan asked why and was told that 'we do it differently up here'. That doesn't sound right to have significant differences in a clinical trial. She will ask the oncologist next visit.

Amazing how a bit of good news cheers us up.

Round 4 chemotherapy

Joan's sinus infection looks like it is at last reponding to the antibiotics. She is off for round four of chemo tomorrow and we are hoping that her blood tests don't show any red blood cell problems.

I recently bought a Mac iBook from a teacher colleague from way back in the 70s. He wanted $50. for a nice clean machine with a good battery and plenty of RAM. I found that the CD ROM didn't accept disks and thought I shouldn't put on him as the price was certainly right. I posted a WTB (wanted to buy) on the W.A. MacUsers' Group page and a young fellow who has given me lots of Macs for distribution said he could help me out. He is IT Manager for an Australia-wide publishing house. I asked what he wanted for the drive and the reply was
I'll test and remove it for one of the smaller blocks of Cadbury Chocolate and a 600ml Brownes Ice Mocha :P - about $6 worth? Good deal especially as it is a DVD Read/Write disk!
Think I might double that price!

Today we had our Hyundai Sonata in for a wheel bearing replacement under the 5 year warranty deal we are on. When I dropped the car off early this morning I mentioned that the passenger side sun visor was stuck and couldn't be moved up or down. The man showed me the work card with replacement of sun visor listed for action. How did they know that? He explained that it was a world-wide recall and all Sonatas of our year model are to get replacement sun visors. Pure coincidence that ours became inoperable just a few days before.

Worrying infection

Friday morning Joan woke up to find a painful swelling between her nose and upper lip. She had been warned to be careful of any infections during chemo and rang the oncologist for advice. His advice was to see her GP as soon as possible. She managed to get in to see her doctor at 5.30pm and it was diagnosed as a sinus infection and went immediately onto antibiotics.

Yesterday we attended a family gathering in Mandurah and during the course of a few hours her face swelled more and a red, blotchy mark appeared on her cheek. This morning it seems to be getting a little worse. We will watch it today for any major changes and hope the antibiotics knock it out by tomorrow.

The family gathering was to welcome Ann and Doug. Ann is my cousin originally from Narrogin Valley who married Doug and they live in Canada. We have visited them in their small town of Mission in BC. Ann tries to return home for a visit every couple of years.

The gathering was at a very nice house on one of the canals in Mandurah. The house is maintained and let out to short term holiday makers, by another cousin, Coral and her husband, Alby. The owner is happy about Coral and Alby using the house when it is not rented. Good deal! It has its own jetty and a couple of crab nets hanging off the jetty caught a few crabs whilst we were there.

Mandurah is about 75 kilometres from Perth and is a thriving city. Once a retirement destination for many farmers, the development of canals and housing has caused a major population increase. A bit too expensive for us to buy into.

Rule 26

Joan's Chemotherapy treatment is ever changing. Last week she was managing well...no real nausea or diarrhea. This week she is experiencing new symptoms....teeth and jaws aching, extreme sensitivity to cold and tiredness. She had a bad day where she broke down and did a bit of yelling. I can understand that...I was just not expecting it. We have few if any arguments.

We have a friend in New York who has just completed her chemotherapy for breast cancer. She wrote to Joan suggesting she invoke rule 26. Rule 26 says that the husband must not later bring up the topic of what was said (or yelled) to/at him during chemotherapy. Seems like a good rule!

We both go to the same medical centre. My GP knew about my father's bowel and liver cancer and had me get a colonoscopy regularly every 18 months or so. Joan's GP(s) should have known about her family history of bowel cancer, but somehow it slipped through and she never had a colonoscopy until she was diagnosed. I may suggest that a red warning label be attached to the front of patient files telling of family history of such diseases. Maybe Joan could have been diagnosed at an earlier stage?

A court case just finished, has a music copyright holder winning a case against the band 'Men at Work' for the supposedly pinching of a very small riff of an old Australian kids' song Kookaburra sits in the Old Gum Tree and weaving it into their immensely succesful piece 'Down Under'. Down Under was used as the theme for Australia's successful challenge of the America's Cup. I expect that Men at Work merely wanted to make their song as Australian as possible, but the b------s who now own 'Kookaburra' which was written in the 1930s are going to sue the band for millions. Kids in schools, on scout camps all know 'Kookaburra' and they should now rally behind Men at Work and punish these litigious shites.

1st Fremantle Sea Scouts..100 years young

On Sunday we; a few good friends and I, went to the riverside HQ of the 1st Fremantle Sea Scouts. The occasion was a celebration of 100 years of service to the local community. It was a big gathering, maybe three hundred people.

I started at the 1st Fremantle (then named the 69th Fremantle) sea scouts as a Cub Scout aged 11 and finished as a Rover Scout at the age of 21, just prior to heading off to New Guinea to start a teaching career.

The scout group had a campsite at Garden Island and every holiday we sailed to Garden Island in open cutters in any weather. I don't understand how parents let their young kids go to sea in bad weather with inadequate safety gear. We didn't lose any kids in all those years. Many got terribly seasick and felt like jumping overboard and no doubt some had upset tummies because of the food we prepared. Good character building stuff.

There are no private campsites on Garden Island now as the Royal Australian Navy has commandeered the whole Island as a base.

At the gathering, memories were tested as oldies debated events and argued over who did what.

I felt my age as the younger people talked about their experiences and we bored them with tales of adventures from long ago.

It was a great day!