Year of the Ox

The neighbors suggested we go down to the Chinese Gardens and see the fireworks show. It was a great evening, and the fireworks were awesome!

New door and a gate

Put a gate in the fence between the neighbour's and us. We visit each other often, trade food, and generally help each other out and a gate has been talked about for a long time. We plan to combine energy and produce a lot of food this year I think.

I also put a new door in the back of the house. We picked it up for $40 from Hall Bros (really cheap!). It has a big reinforced window in it so the entry hall gets light now. Even at night, the outside light gives good light through the window.

Lighting is an interesting design challenge in the house. Obviously we have replaced all globes with pearl energy savers at the lowest wattage we could get (11 Watts, still looking for less), and now its a matter of positioning the lights so that they give the maximum amount of useful light. Right now for example, we have 1 light on. It lights the lounge room and the kitchen slightly, as well as our bedroom through the glass doors. I've already mentioned that the outside light lights the hall, and the kitchen light lights the deck through the windows. I don't think there is ever a time we have more than 3 lights on. Thats 33W per hour as apposed to 180W per hour if we had normal light bulbs, or 360W or more if we used twice as many lights. This, combined with fire heating (and cooking), gas, a very small fridge, and no entertainment system is probably why our energy bill averages $45-$50 per month right through the year.

Produce garden coming along

This is a great time of year for gardening. Our produce garden is getting better, with more of a focus on perennials this year, as well as fruits and berries. Next year, maybe livestock! Here's some photos:

Byron, Singapore and Malaysia

Sunshine and I spent 3 weeks visiting some of our family over Christmas/New Year. This took us to Byron and Brisbane to see my Mum's side, then onto Singapore to see Sunshine's Dad and her Brother and Sister. Amazing sky scraping architecture, museums and shops, parks, and organic farms. From Singapore we all went into Malaysia for a little look see, stopping at the amazing Malacca to soak up the blends of 16C Portuguese, 17C Dutch, 18C English colonial building mixed with the foreverness of Malay, Hindi and Hokkien Chinese. We drove straight through Kuala Lumpar to the impressive Batu Caves where Hindu shrines have been built, and monkey clans hangout and snub tourists. After that we breathed some 1500m + mountain air up Fraser Hill and videoed Sunshine's brother riding a wave board down the mountain road.




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Photos
map of our Singapore tour

Suva - waiting for Tuvalu

I'm in Suva, Fiji... waiting for a connecting flight to Tuvalu. The flight keeps getting canceled and I've been waiting for 3 days now with about 12 others. Air Pacific has put us up in a nice hotel and pays for our meals. Each day I try and find something new to do, but that will not take too many hours in case I miss the call for the flight.

On the first day I walked a few kms to the local yacht club to see if I could borrow an outrigger canoe. A few phone calls and the generous people in the canoe club had me set up with a single and paddle. It was a long haul out through the oil slicked harbor, but I eventually made it to a reserve call Mosquito Island. It was a really nice place where locals go for swimming and picnics. It is also close to my hotel, so I paddled across for lunch. The head winds were strong on the return and it must have taken me well over an hour to get back to the yacht club. I was pretty tired on the walk home so grabbed a taxi.



The next day a Mirja, a German journalist in the group and I went for a walk in a local water fall park up on Princess Road. I saw this park on the way in from the airport. It was a $10 taxi ride, and $5 to get in to the park. About a 5km walk and the little falls and swimming holes in what appeared to be native forest was really nice. The swimming holes were set up with little dam walls with seating and picnic shelters. We didn't swim at all but it was just a nice place to escape the heat and see the forest. On the way back we picked up some kava drink.. I still need to learn how to mix it, and plan to try it out with the rest of the group tonight. Wikipedia cites research that found Kava to be effective in killing some cancer cells.

Today I'm catching up on email and work stuff... avoiding the work stuff with this post instead.

When I get through to Tuvalu, my job is to run a workshop on the use of MediaWikis for the Commonwealth of Learning. I'm really looking forward to meeting the people at the University of the South Pacific (USP) and if they half as friendly s the Tuvaluans I have met already, it will be a great experience. Hopefully the flight will confirm before Tuesday.