Crepe Myrtle

This afternoon I was talking to my neighbour Dave over the side fence.  I asked him what the nice red flower was near the fence.  He told me it was a Crepe Myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica)     

When Joan was near the end of her time, we had a conversation with Dave and Judy about the need for more street trees.  Joan said that she liked Crepe Myrtle.    They planted one there for Joan.  I didn’t know that and this is the first time I have seen it in flower almost three years since her death.

 Thanks Dave and Judy.

To Bee or not to Bee

Helen and James have a large spider in their back yard.  It doesn’t do much travelling, just sits in its web waiting for bees to get caught up in the web.  

Monsanto is copping a bit of flack from the greenies as they reckon Monsanto chemicals are about to kill off the world’s bee population and we will soon be without food.   Spiders like this baby kill a few bees and with Monsanto, we may have to hand pollinate every vegetable, fruit and flower.  Good for employment!    Just kidding!

The Book Thief

Went to the cinema this morning with Margaret and Joy.  We saw The Book Thief.  All three of us had read the book and we all enjoyed the movie. 5/5 from me. 

Not sure if it absolutely mirrored the book and I will re-read the book to compare.  Second thought....I liked the book and I liked the movie and don’t want to be disappointed with either, so, I won’t re-read the book just yet.

I have read a few reviews of the movie and there are the usual critics who pan it. I guess you wouldn’t keep your job as a critic unless you panned the odd movie or play.   Mel Brooks did a good job on critics in History of the World Part 1.

Daughter Helen had some good news today.  She was to start the school year teaching two different levels in two different classrooms.  It seems that the school has had many more kindy and grade ones enrol and she can now have the one class for the year.  One teaching program rather that two.  She is pretty happy this evening.

Fasting for Draculina

I have just returned from having some blood taken for pathology tests.   The collection centre which is near our house, opens at 8.30am and when I arrived at 8.15 there were already four people waiting outside the door.  We are the early risers and fasters and as the door opened there was a bit of ‘were you in before me?’ as the queue tickets were taken.  I was to be 4th in and I took a magazine so that I didn’t have to search through the heap of old womens’ magazines for something that wasn’t about Brad or Angelina.  By the time I was taken in to Draculina, there were about ten people waiting with churning stomachs.

My turn took no time at all and as I exited the rooms asked the assembled for advice about whether I should have a bacon and eggs breakfast or just cereal.  Mutters and just a couple of laughs.

Daughter Helen starts back at work tomorrow. She is there today for staff meetings  etc.    The kids return to school tomorrow.  Strike that, reverse it (Willy Wonka). The kids start school next Monday.

 At the end of the 2013 year she was offered a three days a week contract, and fortunately in the last ten days of the holidays, she was offered another two days making up the full week.   She is not Permanent and is at a ‘hard to staff school’.   Being in the Western Australian public school system, that is one of several ways to get permanency....spend a year full time at hard to staff school.     She has completed three terms and now only needs to finish first term 2014 to get full permanency.    Had she not got the full week’s work she would have been granted permanency for only three days.  Crazy stuff!

Permanency means that you are assured a full time job without worrying if you are going to get paid employment every term and year.   It doesn’t mean that Helen will not be transferred to another public school some distance from her home next year.  

Triple J

Yesterday, Australia Day, I was invited to Helen and James’ place for what I thought was an Australia Day party.  

There were five guests and we had a splendid BBQ lunch with Helen’s wonderful salads.

Instead of the usual background music, the radio was tuned to Triple J, the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s Youth Channel.  Everyone except me was discussing the merits of songs and artists being played and where they would end up in the final countdown to the best artist of 2013. 

   Apparently all over Australia and indeed the world, people were voting on their choice.  Every time I introduced a topic into the conversation it fell flat.  I had no idea that this was just one of 5,000+ listening parties across the nation.

Triple J says that 173,658 people voted from 169 countries.  

The winner....Vance Joy beat Kiwi star Lorde to top Triple J’s ‘hottest 100 for 2013’.

Not very perceptive Kev!

Pub crawl in Fremantle

This morning I drove to Margaret’s house to collect some tadpoles.  They will metamorphose into Motorbike Frogs.  I gave them to my daughter Helen who has put them into a very large pot housing a water plant.   We have had motorbike frogs before and they can be a bit annoying sometimes as they sound like local kids on unlicenced motorcycles racing through bush and parks.  Their real name is Annoyingus.youthos.w.a.    Just kidding, they are really Litoria moorei.   See here.

Yesterday Helen and James invited me into Fremantle for lunch and a few drinks at three (or was it four) hotels.  First stop was the National Hotel recently opened after a lengthy renovation.  Lovely building and fine verandahs to look down on the peasants from.  

                                    The National during a major renovation

We ate there and it was  cheap, but a bit ho-hum.  I rarely drink at a hotel or bar and I was a bit shocked at the prices of three pints of ale....$36!   That is just short of a carton at the bottle shop.  Let’s see......taxi each way to and from Fremantle around $60,  food and drinks?   Not for the unemployed!  We ended up having two meals; the second one at Sandrinos was a seafood platter.  I pulled up OK this morning.

I hate dementia

I had a busy day today, however I made time to visit Murray in his nursing home.  I have known Murray for many years, but we have not been close. We were in the Rover Scouts some fifty six years ago.

We, the surviving members of that group, have occasional get-togethers and unfortunately Murray is no longer able to attend those infrequent gatherings. He has dementia and doesn’t know who he is or who I was today.   The nursing home he is in is a very nice place with caring staff.  When I visited him today, he didn’t recognise me or what I was saying.  He made many attempts at starting a conversation, but couldn’t get past the first few words.  His companions were all in special chairs and not watching the large screen television they were arranged in front of.  Next to Murray was a woman in her eighties nursing a celuloid doll.  She kept talking to Murray in what was probably the Croation language and he looked earnestly at her as if understanding what she was saying.

I have experienced similar before with a couple of close friends and I hate it.   

Murray looks fit and quite young.  Dementia has stolen his very being.

My dear wife Joan died almost three years ago with all her faculties intact. I have wondered if dementia might have spared her the knowledge of what was happening to her.  I am glad that she knew we were with her at the end.

Days of old

Hands up if you have received an email outlining the wonderful things about the 1950s?           You didn’t really have to put your hand up.

Yesterday I tested the premise that it was a much safer time back then by leaving my garage door up and the car unlocked as well as not locking the door into the house from the garage....nothing was stolen, damaged or broken into.  Of course it wasn’t a planned test....it just happened because I fell asleep in a lounge chair early in the evening.

The suburb our house is in, is reasonably safe. It goes without saying that the more expensive the area is to buy into, the less problems one seems to have.  Living in a cul de sac also affords a bit of security.  Living near a laneway or a block of units is a bit of a worry.   Our suburb, Bibra Lake ..St Paul’s Estate, (St Paul doesn’t live here anymore), doesn’t have any blocks of units.   Nuff said!

An installation

Today I installed two computers at a house in a southern suburb of Perth.  One was an old iMac set up to play educational games I had copied to disks (oops...shish!) and the other was a Mac laptop donated by a friend a couple of days previously. I also gave them an HP all-in-one printer, scanner, copier.

The family was a single mum and four kids....three in primary school and one girl about to commence high school this year.  The young lady got the laptop and the boys have to organise a schedule to use the educational games Mac. The three of them are a ‘handful’ and I expect that there will be some arguments about the use of the old iMac.   I did however load some non-educational games onto the iMac and that should keep them happy for a while.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the girl who got the laptop was a Mac user.  Her  father has the exact same model Mac laptop I gave her and she needs little backup to use it.   In the short time I was in their house she had loaded a music CD onto iTunes and was playing it.  

I took a photo of the kids.  The boys are typical funny kids...one of them can slide his eyelid down and hold it in a dozy look for a photo.

                                       I felt good about this installation*

* arty word for an art exhibit constructed within a gallery

Youth Club

I have readied six PCs for a local Police & Community Youth Centre.

.  These centres are aimed at giving youth a place to meet with suitable activities to occupy their time.  The computers will be used for job applications and general research.

The computers come from the West Australian, this city’s only daily newspaper.  For a number of years I have sourced many good Macs there, refurbished them and passed them on to needy people.  This is the first time I have received PCs and I asked for PCs because the volunteers at the centre are familiar with PCs.

The PCs came with hard drives wiped clean and no original operating system install disks.  I loaded up a legacy copy of an operating system.  Next came the search online for the drivers for the mouse, keyboard, video, sound etc etc.  These drivers must match the brand of computer and the exact model.   With the help of a friend who teaches IT we eventually tracked down the drivers and installed them.  Then comes the add-ons such as a DVD/CD read/burn program and Video player.

It is all finished and awaiting collection tomorrow.  At 74, I won’t be doing that again.  I’ll stick to what I know....Macs.

Pastel Wrasse

Daughter Helen and husband James have a large saltwater indoor fish tank.  One of the larger fish, a Pastel Wrasse, has determined that he/she is going to be the boss of the tank.  Wrassey has already killed 7 other fish and is determined to knock off the remaining Yellow Hooded Goby.  The Goby has a safe retreat too small for the Wrass to get into and so far, is a survivor.  Although the Wrasse is acting like a White Pointer, Helen and James still like it and will probably get another smaller tank for it.   Maybe the Wrasse will look over at the large tank and see Mr Goby happily swimming free?

Click on the photos to enlarge them.

Pastel Wrasse

                                            

                                                         Cautious Goby

                                     Wrasse patrol past Mr Goby's hideout

The Goby is a sand-sifter and it can be seen drawing in sand and straining it for food before blowing the residue out through its gills.

Cortisone injection

Yesterday our son Martin had an X-ray directed injection of cortisone into one side of his hips.  For some reason the other side will be done in another week.

He has had around a month of severe pain causing a lack of sleep and shades of the black dog.   In the morning of the procedure he expressed concern that there was a real possibility that he would experience serious side effects and several people he knows who have had the same procedure suggested that it did no good whatsoever.

I urged him to go ahead with the procedure and pointed out several friends who have had good results.  I dropped him off at the medical centre and when I collected him he was quite unhappy about the whole thing.  By the time we arrived at his unit he was feeling good and this morning he is amazed at the results.   He is looking forward to the second treatment next week.

The medical centre bulk-bills patients and the procedure cost him/me nothing.  Australia does have a very good medicare system.   The federal government is thinking about charging a $5 upfront fee for all bulk-billing practitioners.  We can handle that!

                                                             click to enlarge

                         A scan of the X-rays.  The straight lines are the needles.

New Year's Eve

2014.  My NY resolution is to get fit again.    We’ll see.

My garden fly trap is working well.  Flies seem to be very smart creatures.  They are hard to swat and know when you are distracted by carrying something in both hands to attempt a inner-nose landing.

  The putrid smell of a fly trap however, causes them to lose all sense of caution.  Flies walk around the holes in the lid of my trap and must think that they will be able to go in and get out even though their mates are dead by the hundreds inside.

A group of friends gathered at my place to see in the New Year at Sydney time.  None of us felt like waiting for midnight W.A. time.  It was a good evening and we were not bothered by flies or mosquitoes.  I had fogged the greenery for resident mosquitoes and the fly trap must had decimated the local fly population. Flies are not really a problem after dusk.

Vulcan Trucks

What must have been a publicity photo of Vulcan trucks in front of Government House Perth (Western Australia) circa 1920.     The trucks were imported from Britain and the bodies made by Motor Body Builders Fremantle.

When I was young in the late 1940s and possibly in the early 1950s, there were still solid-tyred trucks like these working in the Port of Fremantle.  Solids on the two trucks left and right in the photo.

click to enlarge

                                       
When next I am in Perth City, I must see if those trees are still there.

Boxing Day

Boxing Day in this household is nice and quiet.  Rest day for me.

Father Xmas brought a nice lot of presents for everyone who gathered at Brian and Lilli’s house in Mandurah.  Brother Graham didn’t fall for the bottle of lousy homebrew beer wrapped up in a Moet box I gave him.  He himself gave a present to Lilli in a MacBook Air box.  He did something similar last Xmas, so she also wasn’t fooled.

Daughter Helen and husband James gave me a three-piece flavorStone cooking set.  I followed the instructions for the preconditioning of the three utensils and gave the fry pan a workout with a nice piece of filet steak topped with cherry tomatoes for lunch.   It functioned exactly as advertised.   Great, thanks  H & J.

My niece Katherine and husband Rick were back here in Western Australia from the U.S. for Xmas.   Katherine is partner in PricewaterhouseCoopers and Rick is a dermatologist.  They recently bought a multi-story house in the middle of San Francisco and are going to rent somewhere for a year whilst an architect supervises the remodelling of the building.   

Katherine gave Rick a very smart professional hand-held variable magnification and LED light inspection tool.   I had jokingly mentioned earlier in the day that everyone should line up for a five-minute consultation and after opening his present he decided to check out a small lesion I have on my scalp.  The verdict is that it is OK.

   

Katherine and Rick have invited people to visit them in their new house after the renos are completed.  I think I will do it.

Christmas Day 2013

My best wishes for the season and that 2014 will be a healthy, happy, safe and prosperous year for all my friends and readers.

I am the ‘skipper’ and doing the driving when my Brother Graham, daughter Helen and husband James travel south to Mandurah to see if Santa has any pressies for us at Joan’s sister’s son, Brian’s house.    (I love apostrophes!)   Apostrophes for the pedantic.

Our son Martin visited yesterday and I gave him a haircut and he thought he would be able to join us in Mandurah today, but his AS is still causing him lots of grief and he is not able to attend.  

The Lock family has a track record of dodgy Xmas/birthday  presents.  I am giving brother Graham a bottle of poorly made homebrew beer dressed up in a Moet box.    He will also get a real Xmas present from me.  Don’t know what he may spring on me.

Sharks and flies both hazardous at Christmas

Some savoury and not so savoury stuff.    It is the fly season here in Western Australia.  Nice hot weather and the flies breed like...well; like flies!

I set up a couple of my homemade flytraps with the same bait in the same position and strangely, one trap is very successful and the other has not attracted a single fly.    Can it be that the flies don’t like blue plastic bottle lids?  Both traps certainly have equal stinkiness.

My cocktail tomatoes are going great guns and I can harvest about 50 tomatoes each day.  I have made a few sauces and daughter Helen came this morning to collect a lot to make a soup.  When the bushes were young the tomatoes suffered from insect strikes.  I sprayed for about a week, then stopped and I no longer need to worry about insects.  I guess there are a few more weeks of harvest yet.

The Western Australian Government has decided to catch and kill sharks cruising our beaches where swimmer and surfers frequent.  There have been a number of  fatal attacks and some non-fatal attacks over the last few years and the state government has been pressured into doing something about them.  Opponents to any ‘cull’ of Great Whites argue that more people are killed in road accidents than by sharks, which is quite true.  

There are, at a guess, approximately up to a million drivers in W.A. out of a total population of 2.118 million people.  I could be quite wrong guessing that around half the population drives, but any true number would be far above the 10 or so sharks spotted around the coast at any one time.  The pros, cons and stats are here.

I guess both flies and sharks are up for a bit of Christmas fare, too.

The Land of the Unexpected

Papua New Guinea is sometimes called ’The Land of the Unexpected’.  In the 36 years since we returned to Australia after leaving PNG, I have followed PNG’s progress since  Independence from Australia in 1975.     There have been some ‘unexpected’ happenings there over the years.  Recently a number of horrific murders of mostly elderly women accused of sorcery.  

Here is a recent article from the nation’s main newspaper.  Hard for me to understand  how an educated man can believe such stuff.  He obviously has a brain, but methinks he is sitting on it.

Another strange and hard to fathom act is being perpetrated by the speaker of the National Parliament House.  He has ordered contractors to tear down and destroy traditional carvings  which adorned Parliament House.   

A POLE symbolising national unity will adorn the Grand Hall in Parliament to replace the totem pole that has created so much public debate over its displacement.

Speaker of the national parliament Theo Zurenuoc said the national unity pole would comprise four layers representing the Word of God, the Constitution, the people and the Covenant.

The totem pole has three heads representing the god of witchcraft on the left, the god of immorality on the right and the god of idolatry in the middle,” he said.

“While the carvings are harmless and lifeless wood, they symbolically represent ancestral gods and spirits of idolatry, immorality and witchcraft.”

The missionaries did a good job converting him.

Ankylosing Spondilitis

Over the last week I have been trying to get a Mac computer running.  Ken, who owns the machine uses it to run video and music.  He has spent most of his life as a muso playing guitar.  His Mac is the last of the MirrorDoor series.  Nice machines, but a bit rare these days.  Ken has a late model Mac 27” to record and tweek voiceovers that he does for ad agencies.   He has an impressive sound studio at his house.   I took a couple of shots with my phone which were poor and have made a resolution to take a real camera when lighting conditions are not great.  

   

When trying to get his older Mac running again, we determined that the power supply was U/S and I thought that the chance of finding an identical PS was pretty remote.  A friend told me that there was a similar Mac on a roadside chuckout so I collected it and it was identical.  The owner of the salvaged Mac had been either too lazy or lacked the knowledge to remove the four Hard Drives from the machine and so attacked it with what must have been a sledge hammer.  The four drives were damaged beyond use, but the power supply looked undamaged, so we installed the one from the roadside and he now has his music machine working again.  

This morning I could not get my son to answer his phone and I did a little panic and drove down to  his (my) unit.  He is in poor shape with continual pain from Ankylosing Spondilitis and has spent a couple of days sleeping.  Not good!  He also has fluid retention in his feet, so I drove to Kwinana shopping centre to see if I could get a non-script diuretic.  The only available non-script stuff was an alternative off the counter product which I didn’t go for.  Tomorrow I will collect him and take him to his GP to get the real stuff.   The Kwinana Shopping Centre is a new building, very large,  serving the town of Kwinana.  The de rigueur is tatoos on arms and legs.   Sorry; not everyone there has a tat!  We, Joan and I, taught in Kwinana in the 1960s and every time I have occasion to shop there (very rare) I expect to see some ex-students and forget that they would now be in their early 60s.

Chef accidentelle

Last night I cooked a pickled beef silverside   I did it on a BBQ outside.  I calculated the cook time to be two hours and made up the usual blend of water, vinegar, pepper seeds and brown sugar.  Once it was at the boil, I set the timer, reduced the flame to a simmer and sat down with a glass of wine and watched TV.    I recall waking up in the chair at 10pm and staggering to bed.  I had slept through the timer alarm.

Around 4am I woke with a start and remembered the meat and dashed outside to find the beef cooked to perfection and the gas blown out by wind.  This morning I am eating sliced pickled beef on toast....perfect!    I will hide the remainders somewhere in the fridge as my son is visiting today and he loves silverside.

Yesterday I had three pleasant young university students come to collect a Mac computer each.  There was a bit of paper/scissors when the selection of computers and larger screens were lined up, but they were all most grateful.  That makes my project worthwhile.  These Macs were G5 towers given to me by my contact at an Australia-wide printing works.  Nice machines, liquid cooled with solid aluminium cases.  Almost a bit sad to see them go! 

Caveat Emptor

Over the past couple of days I have attended two Xmas ‘get-togethers’.   Can’t say that they were wonderful or even necessary and I guess I am becoming a grumpy old man.   I meet with four other friends weekly for coffee, snacks and conversation and that is good and enough for me.

An ex-student of mine, Sean, lives in NSW.  He rang a couple of days ago to tell me that he is soon to turn 50 and a group...family and some friends, are going to Phuket to celebrate the event.  I can’t remember turning 50!    He asked me to attend and I think I will.  Thanks for thinking of me Sean.

Yesterday I drove to a nearby suburb to buy an advertised camera tripod.  It was inexpensive...$30 and I asked if everything worked.  I was told that it was all OK. The young couple seemed pleasant and I later found that the tripod head was shattered and useless.  Fortunately I was able to made some rough repairs and it will do the job I had in mind.   I emailed the couple saying that they were selling under the umbrella of caveat emptor (buyer beware)  and whilst $30 to me is nothing, I felt sorry that $30. was so important to them.

visiting chef

Our daughter Helen cooked for me last night.  She brought over all the ingredients for a wonderful meal and all I had to do was the clean up and enjoy it with her.

Lamb cutlets with roasted cherry tomatoes in a red wine vinegar glaze and a potato, zucchini, green bean and fetta salad with roasted pine nuts, lemon, mint and olive oil dressing.     Accompanied by a local (Houghtons) bubbly.

Living alone doesn't inspire me to go to great lengths to present a nice meal and I guess most single people are in the same boat.

Outstanding!    Thanks Hel. you can come over and cook for me any time you like.

Artistic postcards

My friend Joy’s daughter is very artistic.  Only recently have I seen some of her paintings and lino prints.  The ones I have seen are mostly artistic postcards home after an event. A short text and the artwork.  I like them!

                                    Click the photos to enlarge them.

                      Hi mum, got home from Linda's funeral and painted this.  

To me, it's about the winds of fate, but also about how for the one involved, stuff scattered, shared or gone; but ended and those close; devastated. But to all down the hill, life as normal.

Got to have a cup of tea with the other sister today and apparently when Linda was in and out of consciousness she kept saying ‘its so beautiful but it's windy’ Interesting! 

A little lino print I did last weekend. My sweet daughter with the orange hair asked what the Milky Way looks like .

I was totally horrified.  She is eleven and didn't, like me, remember being a kid in the seventies and lying on front lawn, loving looking at the stars .

Couple of weeks later we had a holiday in York and both spent the night staring at the sky.... also a big tree with a swing. Lovely night.

PNGAssociation

Daughter Helen is recovering from the migraine attack.  She has a supply of a nasal spray named Imigran, which seems to give relief.  

Yesterday I joined about 40 other oldies for a reunion of Papua New Guinea expatriates who all belong to the PNGAssociation, an Australia wide organisation aimed at keeping people in contact so that they can get an opportunity to tell their stories to people who will be interested.  Many people are not too interested in old PNG stories.

The venue was a hotel reception room and we shared the room with another reunion of the class of 1962 of Kent St High School.  I was amazed to see my cousin Ted at the Kent St gathering in the same room.   The noise from around 80 people recounting past times was deafening.  

At 74 I thought I might be the oldest there, but there were plenty older than me.

I will suggest the next ‘get-together’ be at someone’s house so that it is easier to converse and move around.

Migraine

Yesterday was not one of my better days.   Daughter Helen had rung in sick at work with a minor migraine.  Later in the day she was woken with extreme stabbing pains in her head.  She rang me and I drove to her place and determined that an ambulance trip to the nearest hospital was necessary.  James her husband was out with one of their dogs at a vet.

I cannot recall seeing someone in such pain.  She could not think straight and was alternating between screaming and swearing.  I tried a cold compress without any relief as we waited for the ambulance.     James arrived home just as the ambulance turned up.  We got Helen out to the ambulance and it seemed ages as the ambos asked a series of questions which I felt was to determine whether this was serious enough to warrant and emergency trip to hospital.  I do know from sitting in the reception area of the Emergency Dept., that had I driven her to hospital she may well still be waiting for assessment and treatment.

After a CT scan of her head, two doses of morphine, a nasal administered pain killer and intravenous something, the pain receded somewhat.  Then came the nausea and vomiting which lost the last two painkiller tablets.   I could see improvement and so left Helen and James and came home.  She was discharged at around 9pm and given a script for some heavyweight painkillers which they filled on the way home.   Today is her birthday and tomorrow is mine.  We were to go out for a meal tonight, but I am not sure that would be wise.

                                                         Helen

A Busy Bee

I own a second story unit in a block of 18 in Orelia, south of Fremantle.  It is quite a nice 2 bedroom unit with a large deck.  Unfortunately Orelia has some major problems with youths invading such blocks of units by kicking in steel fences and jumping over walls.  Cars are damaged and anything of value not locked down is stolen.  Our son Martin is living in the unit.

There are 18 units in the block and some of the owners refuse to pay the Strata fees.  Whilst legal action has been taken on them, it is a long drawn-out problem and responsible owners have been hit with extra Strata fees to pay water bills etc.

The Strata management asked owners to attend a ‘Busy Bee’ this last Sunday with the idea of  cleaning up gardens, pool and gazebo areas.  Three owners turned up and we worked solidly for three+ hours.  Busy Bee is an Australian term for a group work session without payment.  Like me, the other two owners either lived in their unit or had family residing there.    

Mean spirited act on the part of the other 15 owners.

                                                    Not as nice as it looks

Techno tragic

I recently bought a secondhand 17” MacBook Pro for $150.  Love it...fast; great speakers, unmarked condition.    I have an iPad, but clumsy Kev has trouble doing one hand typing on a digital keyboard.  I have other laptops and desktop computers which I should give away or sell, but I am afraid that I am a techno-hoarder.  I still have an operational Beta VCR and 30+ movies (tapes).

The Australian Prime Minister has taken a hammering from the Indonesian President after it was disclosed that Australia has been spying on Indonesia and even monitoring President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s personal phone calls, including conversations between the Pres. and his wife.   PM Tony Abbott has not really apologised and the pressure is on to either give an apology and assurances that spying will stop, or relations between Aus and Indonesia will get very frosty. Already the Pres has cancelled all military cooperation with Australia and canned the deals made about boat people heading to Australia through Indonesia.

U.S. President Barack Obama was recently caught holding the ball about U.S. spying on Germany et al. and he immediately apologised and that seems to have calmed things down.  I think everyone knows that almost all nations are doing a bit of eavesdropping on friends and enemies.  China has been doing a bit more than listening in...it is claimed that Chinese agencies have been breaking into U.S. military networks.

Unless our PM apologises and promises to look into what is going on, the Indonesian public might well vote in a radical President next election.  Goodbye Bali!

The Bachelor

I declare that I have not watched ‘The Bachelor’ on TV.   What I see online and in the newspapers is enough.  This fellow is to choose his lifetime partner in a reality TV farce.  Imaging the sniggers at parties when the happy couple arrive.  

I can see the sense in online dating for desperate, single people and those not in the 5% of the beautiful.  Widows, widowers, divorcees, ungainly, unhandsome people need a place to hook up, but to win a partner on a nationwide, very public TV show....nah!

      Wait.... 'widower, ungainly, unhandsome person'....sounds like me!

                                    I guess a followup show could be The Divorcee.

                                                           Pick one mate.

                                            Sorry there's only one winner.

Tomato fails

I dabble at growing vegetables.  My tomatoes are healthy, but insects have attacked most  of the fruit making them mostly inedible.    They look OK as they hang there, but underneath the tricky little bugs have ruined them.  I spray all the new fruit with a gentle insecticide Pyrethrum.  The label advises that there should be a one-day withholding period before picking the fruit.  I notice that a second ingredient is Piperonyl Butoxide which is nasty sounding stuff which was the main ingredient of fly sprays in the 1950s/60s.

It is hardly worth growing tomatoes, when at this time of year here, they sell for $5. per box. 

There is no way that ‘organic’ and regular market garden tomatoes don’t get sprayed to keep the bugs off.  They, of course, use organic insecticides and managed insect control....Oh Yea?

Newmont Boddington Gold Mine

Yesterday daughter Helen and I drove to the Newmont Gold mine at Boddington.  We, and about 500 other people, were guests of the company which was opening the minesite to family, friends and partners of workers at the site.  The mine is 130 kilometres from Perth in Western Australia.  Boddington is an open pit mine,

Everyone was outfitted with safety gear and we boarded buses for a guided tour of the complete site.    Blasting was suspended for the day, but the mine was otherwise working.    There are two main pits, three crushing plants and a processing plant where the flotation method extracts gold and copper from the final finely crushed ore.  It was a great day.  I cannot remember all the figures of production, so I suggest you watch this YouTube presentation.

The campsite has much to occupy off duty workers which on average total around 1200.  Sports, gymnasium, a wet canteen and a very nice dry canteen (mess) with plenty of nice food. A couple of stats that I did remember were that the canteen did 300 pies per day and 1000 chickens a week.   Watermelon was talked of in tonnage.

We were invited because James, Helen’s husband, works there on a two week rotation (one week on; one off) The tour ended with a BBQ and salads and drinks. Good day!

Unfortunately there was a plague of bush flies.  They don’t seem as smart as city flies and were easy to slap down.

                                               Click photos to enlarge them

                                                         One of two pits

                                                             Dump truck

                                          Helen in front of Dump Truck wheel

                                                       Water truck

          The initial crushing plant which reduces the rock to football size

                                     Trucks tipping ore into initial crusher

                                                Massive cable shovel

                                           2.5 kilometre conveyor belt

'Tight Arse Traveller'

I have had a sudden rush of people turning up to collect free computers from my place and yesterday had a phone call from a chap who asked if I could come to his house to repair his PC.  I explained to him that I was not a PC expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I would have a look at it for him.  He got my name from a librarian at his Public Library.  He was given my name and phone details and told that I repair and distribute computers.  I cannot imagine how the librarian had my details. 

When I went to his house we cranked up the PC and it made a noise which indicated that the RAM (memory card) was not working.  I brought it home and when I opened it replaced the RAM with one from my collection....bingo it now works.  The rear of the box was facing a window which he leaves open to the weather and it has rusted some of the exterior bare steel panels and I believe affected the RAM slot inside the box.  I took it back this morning and he was delighted that he didn’t have to call a real repair man.

                                               My RAM collection

He is 71 years of age...almost three years younger than me and could talk underwater. He is a self described ‘tight arse traveller’ having made many world trips on the cheap.  He flies at night so he doesn’t need a hotel bed; takes his own bowl and breakfast cereal and seeks out other travellers to share a room on the cheap.  On a recent trip he slipped into Burma for a look  and got out without being caught without documents.  Friends maintain that if he were caught and jailed, he would be in first class accommodation compared to his regular doss houses.

Good talking (listening) with him!

A not so wonderful day

Today has been a mixed blessing.   I joined my brother Graham for a lunch at a nearby tavern.   The food didn’t have the taste  I was used to; sort of like I experienced with my dear wife when she was going.  I have lost the ability to cook creatively (if I ever had it).

I came home and continued cleaning out residual memories from cupboards.  I found a package of sympathy cards from Joan’s  funeral.  I will have to find addresses for the senders to send them the URL for our family  blog to tell them how I/we are going. 

That was  very upsetting.

I have lots of people who support me in times like this, many of them ex-students of mine.  A young lady at the bottle shop I frequent is a most pleasant gal.  I enjoy her bright, young,  vibrant personality and I wish I could drain off some of it to me.

A room for visitors

Our son Martin is finally in to my unit at Orelia.  He has found that getting to work by bus is relatively easy, but costs him around $60 per week.   I had to remind him the fuel and associated expenses of running a car would be far more than $60 per week.

I had a full-on clean up of what was Martin’s side of my house and it is now ready for visitors.....if I had any... sniff sniff.  Sister Shirley can come stay with me next time she travels up from Esperance to hit the big smoke.

I recently lost my car in a large shopping centre car park.  Easy enough when most cars are silver and similar size.  I then thought that I would design an App for iPhone and name it ‘find my car’.    I did a search for iPhone Apps and there are dozens already available.  Too late Locky!

Bad Boys

My unit in the non-salubrious suburb of Orelia is ready for occupation by our son Martin.  We; friends and family, have helped shift Martin’s gear in and he will probably move in later this week.  It is a two bedroom second story unit and getting some of the heavy gear up two flights of stairs was a bit of a struggle.  Daughter Helen’s husband James did most of the heavy lifting on the final load this morning.  Thanks James, Graham and Dennis.

Previously it was rented and the last tenants were an Indian family.  They were good tenants, but family comes first and Martin was keen to have his own place.  Their lease ended and I didn’t offer them a new term.

The Strata company which looks after the whole block of units sent me a letter following a complaint by another tenant that my tenants were hanging their washing on a balcony and as that contravened a local by-law they must be instructed to stop the practice.  By the time I received the letter the tenants had vacated the property.  Yesterday brother Graham and I checked out the outdoor clothesline area which has not been used for months, maybe years, as marauding groups of indigenous youths kick down sections of the steel fence and steal all manner of property.   Yesterday as we approached the hanging area, a group of about 10 youths had kicked in the fence and climbed a wall to go swimming in the pool.  We were threatened with death and I am ashamed to admit that a single incident like that caused prejudices that I didn’t think I had.

              I expect most readers know of suburbs like this one no matter where they live.

Stranger danger??

Over the last few days I have had a number of people come to collect refurbished Apple Mac computers.   I had placed notices on boards at Murdoch University and local shopping centres.  Most of the Macs have now gone to people who will make good use of them.  Almost all of them at first expressed  concern that it may not be as I had advertised...free to needy folk.  I also noted that I would rather they be saved from landfill.

I guess it is a sign of the times that people are cautious when offered something of value for free.  In each case the person coming to collect a computer was accompanied by at least one other person.    Fortunately, face-to-face that changed and all of them were most grateful and even excited at getting a nice machine.   

I would have advised my daughter to take a friend along when going to a stranger’s house.

Moses Hailai Jr/Sr

51 years ago I taught a young lad in Papua New Guinea.  Yesterday I had a comment on this blog by his son of the same name, Moses Hailai.   He left his email address and we exchanged greetings and a little about his father who, like me, has retired from teaching.  Moses Jr will pass on my contact details and I am hoping that this will be another reunion.

Here’s a pic from 1962 showing Moses outside my SOQ in the Gulf of Papua, tasting ice for the first time.

Moses Hailai holding the ice block tray.

Our son is soon to be moving back to the unit we purchased some years ago to house him.  It will make it difficult to get to work as he won’t get his drivers licence back for quite some time.  At the moment he gets up at 4.45am to start work at 7am catching two buses from here.  Where the unit is will mean getting up much earlier.  A work colleague who lives near the unit has offered to take him to work, as she starts and finishes around the same time.  Hope they don’t get sick of each other.

Mazda 929

I have had a number of Mazda cars.  All were well built and reliable.  But I feel the need to buy another 929 before they are all gone.  I have had three 929s.  When new, 1991-95, they were very expensive for a Japanese car....somewhere around A$70,000.  My three cost on average, $4,500.    I loved them!

I now drive a Hyundai i45.  Nice car, but I recently saw a 929 advertised for $3,600 negotiable.  Yesterday I went and looked at it.  One owner from new with 100,000 kilometres on the clock.  It looked very nice.  The owner started it and I heard a tappet noise.  $$$$$$   It also had not had the timing belt changed since new.    

Today I visited a local mechanic and he gave me estimates for both jobs.  $800+ to fit a new belt and $1800+ to replace a hydraulic tappet.  I might give it a miss.  Pity! 

The 929 has 4 wheel steering and a host of other electronic stuff which at 20 years of age might start to give trouble.

As Willy Wonka said..’stop that, reverse it’.   If negotiations were to go well, I might yet do it.

A curry dinner party

I am very proud of our daughter Helen.  She was born on the 28th of November and so, was always younger than the rest of her classmates.  She once asked me why she got my brains and brother Martin got Joan’s brains.  ‘Luck of the draw’ I replied.   I suggested that people like us...not so gifted, had to work harder at it and she has since made a successful career as a teacher.  I suspect they both got Joan’s brains.  Hey, I was born on the 29th of November..maybe I wasn't so dumb after all?

Here is an article about delaying starting school for a year which even though we, Joan and I, were teachers didn’t consider at the time.  In the U.S. the term is Redshirting.

She is also  a great cook, experimenting with new cuisine...no sausages and three veg for her and James!  Last Saturday she had a dinner party for eight.  It was a curry night of four different curries; goat, beef, lamb and chicken with dahl and naan bread.  For starters we had spiced potato, samosas and sambals and finished the meal with a desert brought by her friend Maria, a cassata  made with biscuits, fruit, yoghurt and cream...delicious!

Maria is also an accomplished guitarist and we all joined in with her in a good old fashioned sing-a-long.  Sort of like a 1950s stand around the piano evening.

A pretty poor pic of part of the dinner table.  Should have taken a camera rather that a phone.

Talking Turkey at the Panel Shop

Yesterday I dropped off my car at a panel shop for a bit of plastic surgery on a number of scratches and small dents on its body.

Panel shops often like you to claim on your insurance policy and some naughty ones offer to mark down all the dents as one minor accident. The cost is then elevated and if you have been a reasonable member to the insurance company it is approved and everyone is happy.   

In my case I have had a couple of minor prangs over the last 10 years and to keep my no-claim bonus, decided to talk turkey with a panel shop known to do ‘cashies’.  I also didn’t want them to know that at 73 years of age I was losing the plot.  The panel man came up with a figure of $900. which is far below other quotes I had.    $900. seems a lot to touch up minor bits, but if the job is to be done properly, entire panels must be painted to ensure colour matching.  I will collect the car tomorrow.

I thought I would catch a bus to the local shopping centre, withdraw the required cash from a teller and catch a cab home.    No bus, so I walked the 4 kilometres to the shopping centre.  Next I found that the ATM which services my account was down.  Not enough cash for a taxi so I walked the other 4 kilometres home.  I then rode a bicycle to daughter Helen’s place to service the large fish tank and two fish ponds in the backyard.  I started to think that exercise might be good for me.  

In the afternoon I had a visit from a teaching colleague of many years ago; Brendan.  He is back from Texas for two weddings.  Both are of his kids and they decided to coordinate them within a two week period so dad would be able to attend them both.   We had a very pleasant afternoon in the sun primed with a few beers.  Brendan is in Texas with his wife who was transferred there by a mining company which is operating here in Western Australia.   

Texas, if one doesn’t know it, is basically Republican heartland and most people think that it is OK to shut down the nation when the Pres. tries to introduce some fairness to the medicare system.   Nuff said! 

Recycling win

A few weeks ago I visited a recycling centre in the city of Fremantle.  I don’t live within the city’s boundaries, but still manage to dispose of some of my irreparable computer gear there.

I noticed a smart looking laptop in the computer section.  I got it home and found the hard drive had been removed which is standard practice if one is to dump a computer.  No problemo, I had a spare.  It also didn’t have a power supply and the battery was dead.  I took a punt and bought a secondhand power supply for $50. and after a lot of mucking about got it started.   

                             It was the eye candy that sucked me in.

Loading an operating  system and all the drivers for that particular machine (17” Dell XPS M1730) took some time.  It also gave me a bit of a headache getting it to recognise my wireless modem.  After many test starts and restarts I figured I would purchase a new battery for it @ $55.

So there it is up and running.  It is a fast machine, but I am not very familiar with PCs and find getting around in XP a bit clumsy compared to a Mac.   Now I don’t know what I am going to do with it.  

Halong Bay

This morning I drove our daughter Helen and her husband James to Perth International Airport for their flight to Singapore.  They should be touching down about now.  They are spending a few days in ‘Singers’ and then on to Vietnam where they will visit Hanoi and then a few days on a luxury small boat cruising Halong Bay, a popular tourist destination.

Meantime I have done a short course (I think I passed) in maintaining their very complicated and expensive fish tank. Hope I don’t lose any fish over the time they are away.

I have to test water quality; top up the reserve tank, prepare special food for the fish and keep the tank clean.   Fortunately the lighting is programmed.  Mid week I have to get the water tested and purchase new top up water....reverse osmosis water treated to remove any parasites etc.  

                            Fortunately their dogs are in a boarding kennel.