China - here I come!

Tomorrow I fly off to China. This trip has been over a year in the 'possible' basket, but only in the last few weeks in the 'going' basket. I'm all packed up, bags labelled and as full as can be.

I am flying with China Southern Airlines. I have flown with them before. I find the service and safety on Chinese airlines to be just fine. I would certainly prefer their safety records to that of Qantas, who I have spare airpoints with and am reluctant to use.

I am allowed 30 kgs of checked in baggage, plus a carry-on bag, plus my computer. When I started packing I thought I would never need that much, but as it happens, my friends in China have asked me to take some things over, which actually add up to quite a bit of weight.

One of the things I wanted to take over was a cribbage board. This is a board used for counting when you play the card game of Crib. Some of my friends over there are real card sharks, but I know they don't play crib. Trying to buy a crib board was a mission in itself. No one stocks them. I went to all sorts of shops. In the end I had to buy one online which looked good in the picture but turned out to be plastic.(Not the one in the picture here, this one looks wooden. My one is packed away.)  Anyway, it will do the job.

I don't know if many people play cards these days, what with television and all the computer games etc. but my father loved crib, and Dad and I played often. We also taught all our children lots of board and card games. In fact, when our chldren were small, we deliberately went without televsion in the house for about five years. Our family entertainment was reading and games.

Just a side point too, getting children to learn maths, is sometimes a real trial. But if they learn to play card games, one of the things they learn without realising it is maths. They have to learn to count the cards and points. A fabulous way to get the brain working.  I reckon they should have school classes with card games, they would teach children all the basics of adding multiplying, subtracting, keeping the scores etc.

I am also having to deal with different climates. I will spend most of my time in Putian, where it wont be so cold. But I will go to Suzhou for a few days and it will be freezing cold up there, so  need all my winter woollies, thick coat etc. It snows a few times a year in Suzhou.

So I will keep you up to date with my travels here, and will try and post every day or two. I'll add photos etc so you can see what life is like in China. You might be very surprised.

Day trip to Carindale.

The Carindale Shopping Centre has had a face lift, and I haven’t been since it opened some time ago.

 Because this house sit is not far from Brisbane, it’s easy to go into some of the bigger shopping centres for a day trip. I was looking forward to some new shops, and hoping to buy a couple of pieces of clothing for the summer.

I have to say, it was a really disappointing trip. There were some new shops, but it mostly seems to be for the younger ones. Perhaps they are the ones with more disposable income these days. As I do not have a nymph-like figure, I was looking for some larger sized clothing. Well, there seemed to be little around, and what there was didn’t appeal at all.

A couple of my favourite shops have gone, Millers and Katies are no longer there, and K Mart apparently was never there, but I didn’t realise that. They have certainly improved the size of the mall generally, but the food court was the same size.

One of the things I found a bit tricky was the lack of information. They had touch screen information points, but they seemed really limited in what you could ask them, and there were no brochures with the layout of the mall, well I didn’t see any.  I know there is a concierge desk somewhere, but I didn’t come across that.

Then the parking. This is one of the malls that has introduced parking fees after the first three hours. We knew that before we went in and collected our ticket as we entered. We stayed about four hours, so knew we would have to pay something. But what we didn’t know was that you had to pay it as you left the mall building and before you went to the parked car. We didn’t’ see any signs to tell us that! We drove to the exit boom gate and were stuck. The machine told us we had to pay $3, and to put our credit card in, but it wouldn’t accept it. The cancel button didn’t work. We were stuck there with other cars pulling up behind us, unable to go forward. Peter tried backing up, making those behind us also back up, but that was dangerous. So I got out and found an emergency button, pressed that and spoke to a lady who informed us we should have paid at the mall. She said she would raise the boom gate so we could exit, and next time we should pay as we left the building.

Blow that. The shops I like have gone, and the parking is a bit of a pain. We are not keen to return. We’ll stick to something like the Helensvale Mall, free parking, easy to get at and has all the shops I want.

 

Movie scripts and Supergeek.

The other day, a writer friend and I attended a function put on by Screen Queensland. It was about financing movies, and more for producers than writers, but even so it was very interesting. They held this at the Brisbane State Library which is right in the centre of Brisbane, sitting on the Brisbane River.

It's hard to believe that this river was in flood nearly two years ago, and the devastation caused by the rain. They had been forecasting a bad summer, cooler and wetter and they were right. The river rose so much that most of the buildings on the river were seriously flooded.  Note the "Goodwill' bridge going across the river, it is for pedestrians only, the bridge with the bits poking into the air. An elevated motorway is also there.

This is the same scene when it was in flood. Note the Goodwill bridge. The elevated motorway is much closer to the water here.

This is the city centre just around the bend in the river. Huge disruption was caused to the CBD for some time.

One of the reasons I attended this function is that I am  having a go at writing a movie script. I 've been working on it on and off for over two years, and I am getting to the pointy end of it, ready to show it to someone. And I deleted the file. I deleted the whole flaming file, the whole script! Accidentally of course, but even so, it was gone.

I have been using a program called Celtx to write the script, and for the last month or so when I have been adding to it, I saved in on the desktop. And guess what I did with my desktop? Yes tidied it up because my computer has been going so slow it has been driving me mad.

And accidentally I put the script into the recycle bin, and emptied the thing! I was so mad at myself. I do have an old version still, but not with all the additions I have made over the past month or so.

My computer savvy daughter and I spent a whole day trying to recover this file. We tried things on youtube, some of them didn't work, and some of them were rip-offs, being free downloads, then when you got it downloaded you had to pay quite big money to use the thing.

In the end I decided to get in Supergeek, a company that comes to your home and fixes  your computer problems. Sure enough, at 8 am this morning Ross rolls up to find my lost file.  Well, he tried everything, but the file has vanished, evaporated, ka-put, gone for good. He did however, find something else that was a problem. Some months ago I tried to download a program to use to work on my photos, and accidentally, I downloaded something called Conduit.(It sounds like I accidentally do all sorts of odd things on my computer, but it hardly ever happens, I am pretty careful what I do). It was a tool bar that set itself up and I could not move it. It was a menace, making Google crash all the time and making everything go slow. He had to use some pretty powerful programs to get rid of this Conduit, which is actually a virus that continually reinfects the computer. So I was thrilled to get rid of this thing.

So if you find you have something called Conduit, or see it on the internet, don't touch it at all, and if you find you can't get rid of it you will need some pretty powerful tools to get rid of it.

So, now I have to start the last six weeks work all over again. However, yay for Supergeek for getting my computer sorted out and getting rid of this horrible Conduit thing.

The engagement party that didn't happen.

About a year ago, our youngest son Simon met the girl of his dreams. After a while he brought her to meet the family, and we were all very impressed. She was a lovely girl, seemed to have a really good nature, was a nurse, hard working, very practical and down to earth, and her face was arranged very nicely too, she was very pretty.

The romance continued on and a few months later they seemed to be in love making plans to get engaged. Peter and I visited her parents, and it seemed she was from a good stable family too, something these days which I consider very important. She had a very good relationship with both her parents, and in my view these family interactions carry on into married and family life later on.

About four or five months ago, they got engaged, and planned an engagement party but not til the end of the year. The date was set for yesterday, 24th November. Plans were made, invitations sent out, and Rebecca's mother organised food and drinks for about 60 or 70 people. The party was being held at Rebecca's parents home. They have a nice large home with a big open deck area out the back and a swimming pool.

People started ariving at the specified time 2pm. Simon was there nicely dressed in trousers and new white shirt, that I unfortunately managed to smear with my makeup as I gave him a big hug. The other members of our family and her family rolled up, and friends of Simon and Rebecca were slowly gathering, enjoying some drinks and nibbles.

About 2.30 I asked my daughter where Rebecca was. She had not shown her face at all. I thought it was a bit odd, but maybe she was still getting herself beautified out the back. My daughter said she would be out soon. By 3pm, an hour after most people had arrived, Rebecca had still not shown up.

Then her mother and father came out and asked us all to come to the front of the house. They had something to tell us. Dutifully everyone followed and she called Peter and I out to the front. She started to talk, but got a bit emotional. Then she waved us to the side of the driveway, and my eldest son drove up in his lovely bright yellow car.

Ah! Here she was! In a white dress! And a bouquet! And with a bridesmaid!

They had decided about a month ago to turn the engagement party into their wedding, and apart from a very few close family members, no one knew, not even the parents of the groom.

To say we were gobsmacked would be an understatement, but gobsmacked in a really nice way. On the way to the party, I had said to Peter, that it was a shame they didn't get themselves organised and have this as their wedding instead of an engagement. Little did I know!

The father of the bride led his daughter down to the back of the house where a gazebo had been set up, (unsuspecting me....I saw it there and didn't wonder why), a marriage celebrant was all ready to go, Tim, Simon's older brother ( who was going to be best man at the 'one day in the future' wedding) was commandeered unsuspectingly, and we all followed to see an engagement party turn into a wedding.

Saying their vows.


And one of the best weddings it was. Peter and I were just thrilled. They are so happy together. We had all the family there except one daughter who was travelling home from an overseas trip, all Rebecca's family and all our close friends. It was a small ,personal wedding, not complicated, not involving months of work and thousands of dollars, but still with the solemnity and seriousness needed for such a step in life.

Her parents had done a terrifc job of catering for everyone, and I think it would be fair to say that evey single person there had a terrific day. I know we did, and we are delighted to have another member added to our somewhat expanding family.

So, when is an engagment party not an engagment party? When it's a wedding.

Peter and I and the very happy groom. Four down, one to go.

A couple of pics to follow the last post.

My last post has elicited a few pictures on the same theme. I thought they were worth putting up here.

Someone was brave enough to have this as a number plate.

And a couple of animal ones my sister sent me.

Okay, time to bring this subject to a close.

When do you 'fart' or when do you 'pass wind'?

My daughter sent me the funniest story yesterday. It is from a blog called

http://hahasforhoohas.com/the-fart-that-almost-altered-my-destiny/.

It is the story of a first date, when she met the man of her dreams, and completely fumegated him as she 'passed wind'. It brought back many memories, because when we were children the word 'fart' was considered slightly obscene, and pretty much a swear word and never used. So in our family it was always called a 'pop off''. I thnk maybe every family has their own words for some of the bodily functions that we have to deal with on a daily basis.

One of the tips we use as writers, is what is called the 'memory trigger', and in my case this story triggered off quite a few memories of such bodily functions.

When Peter and I were teaching in China, the Chinese students never knew what to call some of these things. They never knew the word poo. In fact, they didn't really know what to say. Of course, in Chinese they would have their own word, but English got them a bit stumped in this regard. And when you think about it, it's not quite right to say you want to go and do faeces. So we taught them wee and poo, but when it came to 'passing wind', they had been taught fart, and that is what was used all the time.

I digress.  Toilets in China are not the normal western toilet, although these days, all new houses and apartments have western loos. But the normal low Chinese loo is still everywhere, and a trial to use when you have creaky knees and hips.

 

Toilet paper is never supplied, there are usually bins provided where everyone puts their used paper. There are usually no handles either, so getting up and down can be a bit tricky, especially as I have old knees that don't like full squatting and complain bitterly when I do get down to it.

One day in one of my classes, I gave them a progressive story to write as a warm up. This is what happened. I've copied and pasted it, so the font is a bit bigger.

On the board I wrote the first sentence of a story. The students sat in pairs across the room and about six rows deep. The first pair in each row wrote my sentence on a piece of paper. In turn they handed this paper to the pair behind them who added another sentence. I collected the finished stories from the pair sitting at the back of the row.

The beginning of this story that I wrote on the board was, ‘There was a loud bang in the airplane’. I thought this would give them scope to take a story in several directions, which it did.

Most of the groups wrote predictable stories where there was going to be a crash, but someone saved them at the last minute. I didn’t read each story through first, which turned out to be a mistake. I read three of the stories to the class, and started on the fourth one.

I read the first line, which was written on the board, and then I started reading the students’ sentences. I just cracked up. I was standing there, crying with laughter, unable to continue. By this time the whole class was giggling. Of course they didn’t know what was on the paper, but I must have been quite a sight, bent over my desk, completely helpless with laughter.

Eventually I asked one of the girls to finish reading it for me. (I hope this doesn’t turn out to be one of those situations where you have to be there for it to be funny). I think it was the unexpectedness of it that took me by surprise and once I started laughing, well that was that. Here is the story, it’s only very short. I hope you get a laugh. I will number the different parts written by each pair.

1.            There was a loud bang in the airplane. All the passengers were frightened. They all shouted, except an old man.

2.            He stood up and said, ‘Calm down, please. It was just a fart.’

3.            Someone shouted, ‘Don’t try to fool us at this critical situation!’ Another roared angrily, ‘How can a fart be so loud?’ The old man said, ‘Because there is a speaker under my buttocks!’

4.            But nobody believed him, there were still a lot of people rushing to the exit.

5.            The old man said ‘Please, please calm down, it’s really a fart.’

6.            The passengers shouted to the old man, ‘Why don’t you control it?’

I dare you to stand in front of 40 students, read that and keep a straight face.

You will also note the use of the word 'buttocks'. Perfectly good word, straight from the dictionary, but not the word we would normally use in our normal speaking.

One last memory that has been triggered was an old friend, my Aunty Estelle's mother Elsie. We had known her for years, but as she got into her eighties, she became the little shrivled up lady that age usually brings on. She took medication, along with lots of vitamins and mineral pills every day. Uncle John used to say that all of Bundaberg (where they lived) would line up to watch her take her daily 33 pills.

She was the most patient woman and never complained. When you asked her how she was, she always said, 'Doing fine dear, doing fine,' even if she was lying in bed with a broken back.

Towards the end of her life, she got quite windy, not that she ate much really, but we always knew when she was up in the morning because we could hear her making her way to the toilet, with a long loud string of pop, pop, pop, all the way to the loo. It's one of the memories I have of her that always makes me smile.  When she died, I put a single rose in her coffin, with a little card, and on it I wrote, 'doing fine dear, doing fine'. She was a lovely old lady.

 

 

 

 

The Suzhou Tourism and Finance Institute.

One of the schools I taught at in China was the Suzhou Tourism and Finance Institute.  As soon as I walked into this place I knew I wanted to work there.

I had originally gone to teach at another school. I had worked through a recuiting agent, who was a scammer of the highest order, so didn't take the job he offered me. But I found out about this job and went and visited them, knowing they needed a foreign teacher. It was only a small school, and as I walked in I was really impressed with the look of the place.

The Director of Studies was not Chinese, which is an advantage. He was from the Seychelles, black as your hat, a tall large man, and a fabulous organiser. The place ran like clockwork, which can't be said for many other Chinese schools. China is sort of, when in Rome, so you learn to just go with the flow, and not get het up about things not being as organised as we are used to. Its just part of the fun of living there. This place had a really authentic Chinese feel to it. For the time I taught there I lived in their hotel.

This is a little garden outside the hotel wing I lived in.

This was a school that taught Hotel Management. All the classes were in English, the whole lot, and they taught some pretty deep stuff, marketing, finance, management etc. They also had to learn to use the kitchens and cook and wait on tables.  They had a fully functioning restaurant as part of the school, where staff, that is me and other staff, could eat our lunches, usually a 3 course meal.

This school was only small but they had a larger campus about 20 minutes away by bus. I went there twice a week and took classes with younger students.  They were all very good, hard working, and once we all got to know one another, we had a great time in the classroom.

This campus had a huge building five floors high. The school took teachers to and from both campuses by bus each day. It did mean quite a bit of stair climbing though. I got pretty fit when I was living there.

The schooling system there is quite different to what we are used to in the West. One of the biggest differences is that they will have a university city. In fact, there were several of these in Suzhou. They had huge areas where they combined quite a few universities all in the same area. There were thousands of students here, and buses came and went, and they were mini cities of their own really.

This picture was taken from my office, but the buildings in the distance are all different schools and universities.

I am still in contact with some of these students and teachers. This was an international school, so I had students from Hong Kong, the Chinese mainland, and quite a few from the Phillipines and Malaysia. Some of the students came to Australia to finish their degrees. This school was involved in a joint venture with the  Blue Mountains Hotel School, so they would come for their final year or two and graduate from their school in Sydney, Australia. Some of them have stayed on, and others have gone back to China and are now in good jobs in the hotel industry.

My trip to China is getting close.

I am going to China for a holiday. Peter and I lived there for some time, teaching English, and absolutely loved it. We have been house sitting since I got back from China, finding it a bit hard to settle down after having a full-on really interesting life over there. And now, I am going back for six weeks holiday.

Peter will be staying here in Aussie, keeping the home fires burning, and staying on at this house sit. One of the down sides of house sitting long term is that you can't just pack up and take off whenever you feel like it, and especially if you have animals to care for, you can take day trips but need to be there every day for feeding and caring for the animals.

However, in this case, the trip is just for me. I am going especially for a wedding. At our first teaching job in China we met a couple of young men who had graduated and came to English Corner every Wednesday night to keep their English language skills up to date. One, Alex, we got to know very well, and over the past six years, we have become great friends. He is getting married, and offered to help me out with the cost of going over for his wedding. Isn't that lovely? When we were living in Longyan, Alex's mother died, and over the past years, I have become his Aussie mother.

Alex used to visit Peter and I regularly. His English was pretty good. He was working, so would come up in the evenings. He was 23 yeas old here, but he is 30 now. We would play cards. The Chinese are terrific card players, and Alex could remember every card that had been played and what was still to come. He won most of the games. I got a bit fed up with that, so taught him Scrabble.  Haha, I won most of those games. I did have an unfair language advantage, but all's fair in love and war...lol..

Alex now lives in a 'small' city called Putian. Population is about 3 million. If you click on the Putian link you will see a map of where it is, on the Chinese mainland about level with Taiwan.

The Chinese, generally, haven't figured out yet about advanced planning. Everything is left to the last minute, so although I knew the wedding would be on, and have known for over a year, they have only just sorted out the dates etc. Chinese weddings are different from western weddings, the whole system is different, but I will update this blog each day when I am there.

So I have my ticket, and now have my visa. Getting a visa for China is a funny thing. They have very strict rules about these things. I have never applied for a visa for any other country, so I guess they are all the same, but at the Chinese Consulate, (I went to the Brisbane one)  they specify exactly what paperwork is needed, and then when you get it, sometimes it is not needed at all...lol.

The visa office in Brisbane has moved, it is now closer to the train station which is handy. When I was checking online for flights I found several that suited, then went into the Flight Centre to make my booking.  I have found the Flight Centre to be excellent and have used them for almost all my overseas bookings. They have offices everywhere and in my experience, the service has always been very good.

Anyway, I was in the flight centre, making my booking when they told me a visa could only be got for 30 days. I was really worried then, because had booked and paid for a ticket for six weeks. So Peter and I went personally into town to put in the visa application, and I got a 60 day visa without any trouble.

So now, it is time to pack and sort out what to take. It will be winter time there, and I will visit some friends in Suzhou, where it can be 5 to 10 degrees below zero in the winter.

 One of the schools I taught at had some beautiful little Chinese gardens and in the winter the ponds were covered with six inches of ice. I'll tell you about this school tomorrow.

Putian won't be so cold, but even so, everyone wears woollen long johns, so it will be a huge change from the hot summer here in Brisbane.

Scruffy the cat, mangos etc.

We have a cat called Scruffy. He's not a real cat, the owners of this house sit don't want animals here because of the birds and wildlife that live around this house, but we have had scruffy since May 2004, and he is an important part of our family.

He's not that big, although in this photo he looks largish.

He sits on the dashboard of our car. We take him everywhere, and he went with us to China when we lived there, sitting next to the television so he could keep an eye on what was happening. He is faded now, he was almost black, but sitting on the dashboard is going to fade anything, especially in this strong Queensland sun.

His whiskers are getting a bit tatty too. He is special because Amanda, one of our granddaughters gave this to Peter the day he had his open heart surgery. He had a quadruple bypass at the Prince Charles Hospital in Brisbane, a hospital that specialises in heart treatment, in May 2004 after having a couple of heart attacks. Peter was brought up on a farm in New Zealand, where in those days, butter, cream, full milk, and fatty lamb or hogget was the food of the day. He was a long distance runner, but even so, after all these years his veins and arteries concreted up inside and he needed some medical help. Since then, he has been good, it's amazing what medicine is able to do these days.

Every country has it's quirks with pronunciation. But a doozie in Brisbane is the road that the Prince Charles Hospital is on. The name of the road is Rode. Normally we would pronounce 'rode' like road, that is, I rode my bike. But not here. Here it is pronounced rowdee road, as in row a boat. I haven't been able to find out why. It's just one of those Aussie things I think.

I have written before about the lovely cacti here at this house sit, and also the mangos. I will add another photo of the same branch of mangos that I showed you before. Where we firstly had a branch full of flowers, and then lots of tiny mangoes, that same branch now has one fruit on it, about the size of a marble. It may or may not survive. We will wait and see.

The dry weather is affecting the trees around here I think. This house sit has a lovely front lawn with some well established trees, but the jacarandas this year are not blooming very well.

There are two on the driveway up to the house, but they are looking a bit spindly at the moment.

More storms on the way.

Where we are on the Gold Coast was not severely hit by the storms yesterday, but Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast certainly took a pounding.

There is a good gallery of pictures on this link here at the Courier Mail newspaper. I can't find the embedding link to put in the pictures for this, so you will have to click on the link. There are reports of hail the size of golf balls in one place.

The Bureau of Meterology is copping some flack for not putting out enough storm warnings before the main storm hit late morning yesterday. But to be fair, they told us there would be bad storms. The other very good information source during storms is the ABC, our local station of the Australian Broadcasting Commission, (radio station) always have local people on hand day and night as long as severe weather is still likely. This is the link for the ABC, they also have some great pictures of lightning.

Last night they had Kelly Higgins-Devine on the ABC, and every half hour she was interviewing the Bureau of Meteorology, giving updates as to where the storms were, what was happening etc, and giving us up to the minute information. I think many people who don't listen to the radio these days won't know about that. The ABC runs this service in any place in Australia during any kind of  severe event, not only storms, but fires, hurricanes etc.

We only had 20 mls of rain here over the past  24 hours, not a lot, and it was generally gentle rain. The grass is happy though, it has greened up already. But they are forecasting more strong storms for us today, and the Gold Coast may get a few more than yesterday. Lets see what happens.

Supercell thunderstorm hits Brisbane.

We were warned yesterday that severe storm were likely today, and sure enough about 10 am the rumbling started. Looking at the Bureau of Meteorology site, we could see the massvie storm building west of Brisbane City. We use this site  often, because the radar is a very accurate means of checking what's going on. This article in the Courier Mail had some good pictures.






The storm didn't last too long, but was ferocious when it hit. They were forecasting large hail too, but that didn't eventuate. When the storms around here are severe, especially at this time of the year, it is not uncommon to get huge hail stones, from the size of a pea to the size of a tennis ball, and anything in between.

While the storm was doing its thing we had some visitors call in. Sue and Steve have been friends for over 35 years, and our families have grown up together. They also do house sitting. After our first few adventures, they thought they would give it a go, and they have had some good times house sitting. They have a caravan that is home in between times, and they travel a bit, so house sitting is not a constant thing with them. As it happens, both of us have had house sits close together several times. When we were on the Sunshine Coast, so were they. When we were in NSW, they were an hour away, so we visited from time to time.

I have just been on the BOM site again, and guess what, another line of storms is on the way. Not so big this time, but the sky is clouding over now, so I guess within the next hour or so, it will be crash boom bang again. I just wish we could get a decent bit of rain out of it. Brisbane had a terrific downpour today, but we are desperate for a bit of rain here.

I'm waiting with bated breath. . . . . . . . .

Spiders leaves and beach balls.

This house we are house sitting has a rendered exterior, so has lots of little nooks and crannies. Around the windows, they are metal framed windows, at this time of the year the spiders are haviing a ball. So a little while back we had a zap the spider day, doing all the cobwebs, and spraying all the window edges with a specially made fly spray to keep the spiders down. It seems to have worked, because we have seen few spiders webs around for the last week or two. We have had one or two inside, but nothing big yet. One of my least favourite things about Aussie is the spiders, especially the huntsmen, who can move at the speed of light. Personally I reckon they should have been made with little bells on, so you can hear them coming. The worst part is that one minute they are not there, and the next minute they are, no fanfare, no horn blowing, just looking at you with the intention of scaring you half to death.  lol.

The other thing that needed doing was clearing the gutters. Because this block of land has such tall gum trees all around the house and pool, leaves are constantly falling, especially in this windy weather we have been experiencing. This house has a sort of gutter guard which is really good, it means the gutters don't fill up, but even so the leaves all congregated along the guttering and look a bit messy. So today we have a lovely clean roof, after our son in law and Peter cleaned away all the leaves. It looks really good. This is often a pretty time consuming job, but with the leaf blower the owner has here, it was quite quick work really.

As for the beach balls, well its been a scorcher today and the next few days are going to be very hot too, with some storms forecast. So it was into the pool about 3pm. With this wind, there is heaps of bits and pieces landing in the pool all the time from the tall gum trees all around, but we have got it down to a fine art now.

I take out a kitchen sieve, and I slowly get in skimming the top of the water picking up all the bits and pieces. While I am doing that Peter is using the longer net thing and skimming the bottom and getting rid of the leaves etc that have fallen right down to the bottom. There is a creepy crawly thing that does it's thing, but it can't get rid of all the stuff on the surface. It doesn't take too long before its nice and clean and we can spend a bit of time playing in the water. We have some brightly coloured balls floating on the top to discourage the ducks, so we get a bit of excercise heaving the balls all over the place. Around 3pm is good because part of the pool is in the shade and we aren't in the full sun all the time.

I think it's going to be swimming now most days. Tomorrow is supposed to be 37 degrees. Yay for a nice cool pool.

The third Thursday of every month is special.

One of the things I love to do is write. I do all sorts of writing, and of course there is my book that I am madly marketing. To keep the juices flowing it helps to have some company. Because I have had several long term house sits in this area I have been attending the Helensvale Writers group for quite a while now.

We have a monthly meeting, which lasts for only two hours, but we are able to get quite a lot accomplished in that time. At the moment we have been meeting in a private home because the Helensvale Library, our normal meeting place is in a temporary building while a new library is under construction. However, that should be up and running within the next few months and we hope to have our meetings there again.

This is a concept drawing of what the new builidng will look like, I copied this from their website. http://www.goldcoast.qld.gov.au/library/t_library.aspx?pid=9920. Not only will it house the library, but have meeting rooms, and act as a Community Cultural Youth Centre. "The new centre will include a wonderful children’s area; reading spaces; a meeting room; space for special events and activities; 36 public access computers; a 200 seat auditorium; rehearsal, recording and digital media rooms; a Council Customer Service Centre and Divisional Councillor’s Office". It is going to be a wonderful addition to our Helensvale area.

Now, back to our little writing group. We worked out, that of the dozen or so who attended today,(there are usually one or two each month who can't make it)  seven of us have published books within this calendar year. That is a pretty amazing feat for just a small group. We also have the advantage of being quite a diverse little group, with extensive knowledge of publishing, both e-books and hard copy books.

We have a financial sponsor who helps to keep us in coffee and biscuits, and more importantly sponsors visiting speakers that come and talk to us. This is Elena Ornig. She runs an e-book publishing company called Hot Digital Books. She is also a writer herself, so knows the joys and frustrations of writing, the good, the bad and the maddening. She also has a world wide network of writers and publishers so we have plenty of advice at our fingertips. I think one of the beauties of our little group is that we share openly with the aim of advancing the skills and knowledge of the whole group.

Another of our members is getting an online book site set up. Rolando Rizzo is a semi retired business man, with a swag of business acumen, and he is calling his site Online Books.net.au.  He is looking for anyone who has written a book and wants to sell it to contact him. He is promoting hard-copy books, rather than digital books.  He is accumulating quite a lot of useful info for writers here too. Check out his site and maybe he can help you with selling your book if you have had one published.  Rolando has also published several books which are selling well.

Total eclipse of the sun in Northern Queensland.

Today there was a full eclipse of the sun. Its funny how these things are described.

I prefer channel 7 for any early morning TV watching. They had sent Mel and Grant Denyer up to Cairns and Port Douglas to report on the eclipse. This was advertised as a 'once in a lifetime' event, 'not to be missed' etc. Of course during the morning we learn that these eclipses happen twice a year, but not often where lots of people can see them clearly. Often the eclipses happen out to sea.

There were some terrific photos of the eclipse on television. This link from the following website has a great video to watch. http://www.news.com.au/travel/australia/watch-the-far-north-queensland-solar

Even here in Brisbane we had a partial eclipse and around 7 am it got quite a bit darker. The sky lost its clear blue look and inside the house was considerably darker.

I have seen several total eclipses over the years, but I noted the feelings of the tv presenters, how they felt, the awe, the changes in temperature, the birds all going quiet, and up north, stars being seen in the sky.

It certainly was terrific to watch on tv, it would have been wonderful to be there and see it over the ocean in the early morning.

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My pied butcher bird sings for his supper.

In previous posts I haval pied butcher bird that is getting very tame. Well he is getting more and more tame. He knows he has us around his little finger.

Previously he wouldide the ranch slider in the kitchen and wait for us, then he would land on the screen door and call for food, and now he is coming into the breeze way by the back door and singing for his supper.  I don't normally feed him there, because we don't want any of his droppings in that area. But even so, he will come and sing his heart out until I take come bread out the back for him.

Its just lovely.  You can see him in this picture, head back, singing his heart out.

House sitting and open homes.

We have had several house sits where the home has been for sale while we have been looking after the house. Thats no problem for us, we have owned lots of our own places and had open homes for selling them.

Where we are currently, the house is on the market. The land agent has brought one or two people through but not many, so decided to have an open home. We emailed the owners to make sure it was okay with them, and they were fine with it. They have been very conscious of our privacy while we have been here, which has been very thoughtful of them.

So yesterday we had an open home here. We always keep the house nice and tidy and clean, so it wasn't as if we had to do anything special. After a prolonged dry spell Peter mowed all the lawns a few days ago, and the whole place is looking really nice, although we have had a lot of wind so the pool is always filling up with leaves.

There are quite a few homes for sale in this area, it is a beautiful area to live in and this house is older but solid, and very private.  Unfortunately the weather wasn't too good, showery, and only one family came through. I think they will have some more open homes in the next month or two, to see if they can find a buyer.  When that happens, we will be off to new pastures.

LIfe death and in-between. 3. In-between.

Well, you know the saying, death warmed, up....thats the in-between. And that is me. I have been sick for a week, feeling lousy.

I woke up just over a week ago with a fever, headache, feeling exhausted and generally feeling terrible.  Two days later Peter took me to the doctor. The doctor saw me waiting outside his room, and alarmed, asked if I needed to wait in the emergency room til he could see me. I said I would be okay.

He called me in a couple of minutes later and Peter explained what was wrong. He took my temperature, I have no idea what it was, looked in my throat and said I had an inflamed throat, here are some antibiotics, come back in two days if I am not better. I said I had been in contact with whooping cough, my granddaughter has it, but he said that wouldn't matter. I told him my throat was not a bit sore.

He handed Peter the prescription and I was out the door in ten seconds flat. He didn't take my blood pressure, he didn't check my pulse, which had been up for several days, he didn't listen to my chest for infection, nothing. I got to the door then realised I had been rushed through, and wondered what he was treating with these antibiotics? I was not impressed. I have trouble with reflux and often my throat looks a bit red, but I didn't get a chance to tell him that.

I had been to this doctor a few times previously and thought he was pretty hopeless, this confirmed it.

Anyway I started the antibiotics in case I was coming down with something terrible (I am going away in three weeks time so don't want to be sick) and I think the antibiotics have made me feel worse. My whole system has been affected, appetite, diahoreah etc. I have been a sorry sight.

Today I am feeling better. One of the problems of house sitting is that you are usually not in one place long enough to establish a good history with a GP. But I will be changing after this episode. There is another doctors rooms close by.

Llife death and in-between 2. Death.

Its been a difficult week for our family.  Our two baby bumps have become one. Our daughter had a miscarriage this week. She was 16 weeks pregnant, although the baby may have died a couple of weeks ago.

The worst part was the unexpectedness of it. She had a bit of spotting on and off, but she had gone to visit the midwife for a normal check up, and as the midwife did a normal checkup on my daughter, and as she listened for the heartbeat her face changed. She went and got the doctor who also listened for a heart beat. My daughter says his face told the whole story.

'I can't hear a heart beat,' he said.  We need to do a scan now. They did a scan, no heart beat. They did a second one, more indepth, but nothing.  The baby had died. My poor daughter had no idea.

She phoned us at once, and her husband was on the way to the hospital, so we picked up her daughters from school and kept them with us for the rest of the day and night. She was induced later that day, and had the baby about 2am. It was a perfectly formed tiny tiny baby. There was no indication of what went wrong, but they will do tests.

So apart from the sudden loss of the baby there was the shock to deal with too. She came up to where we are house sitting (she lives closeby) a couple of days later, and collapsed, so I had to call an ambulance and she was carted off to hospital again. She has very low iron and her blood count is low, so she is going to need a few weeks rest.

The problem is, what do you do with a tiny tiny baby that has not lived outside the mother, is so tiny, has been a part of you , but has now passed away? The hospital would dispose of it but she couldn't bear to think of it being thrown out like a bit of rubbish.

My daughter lives in a fairly rural area and all around there is lots of  spare land. I guess it is council land. They chose a nice place amongst some trees, and buried the baby in a special little box and planted a little tree over it. We had a little family ceremony, and gave the baby a little family goodbye.

A sad week.

LIfe, death and in-between. Part 1. Life.

I've been absent for a while, its been one of those weeks. I am going to divide the week up into three parts and try and tell you about them today. The good, the bad and the ugly of life this week.

Life....the good.

One of the fabulous things about this house sit is the block of land we care for. It is an acre, many trees and shrubs and plants, heaps of birdlife and native life, secluded,( you can walk around in your knickers and no one can see you) and at this time of the year, nature is on the move.

Up the back of this block we have our 'little jungle'. Part of that little jungle is an ants nest. I mentioned the other day about flying ants leaving their nests, well that happened again the other day from the jungle. From the house where we watched, it was an amazing sight.

The 'little jungle' up the back.

 

Let me describe the back of this land. The house is built on a reasonably steep slope which climbs to be quite a highish hill right at the top. The sun rises over this hill, so although the sun might get up before 6am, it doesn't get into the houses easterly facing windows til nearer 8 am, although the sunshine slowly works its way over the hill and creeps towards us.

So, on this morning, the sun had done its daily chin up over the hill and the bright light was filtering through the trees. Through this filtered light we saw the flying ants coming from the nest and flying upwards. There was a whole cloud of them and with the light shining through their wings in movement, it looked like a cloud of moths, a sort of pale brown. They just lifted into the wind and slowly dispersed. Some of them wafted our way and we picked them up. They were small ants, black not brown and there must have been thousands of them.

The birds were on hand and one of the big lizards we have here, they were having a fabulous feed. The food chain in action is an amazing thing isn't it?

Another little gem in the springtime here are a family of Plovers. These are birds, they live in Australia and New Zealand, and possibly many other countries too. I think they are unusual in that they fly in the day and in the night. Often they will fly and call during the night hours.

Daddy Plover, who runs away to distract us if we get too close.


Well, we have mummy and daddy and about four babies on the front area of this block, and we have been watching them with fascination.

The parents are very protective and if we get very close, they will run away calling to distract us away from the babies. Usually one parent will try and get us away from the family and the other parent stays with the babies, all huddled into the ground.

You have to look closely, but one of the babies is just above and to the left of the mother bird.  Another is by the base of the pole. If we get too close they all run away so I can't get closer for a picture.


The grass is not too short where they are so they have a little ground cover and there is longer grass on the neighbours land close by giving them shelter too.

Well I finally got the pictures up for this post and will now do the next two....I have not been well and not at my computer much at all.