The Village Store

The 2nd hand shops always have a book shelf or two so I rode into Drysdale to check them out. I remember seeing this one near the library and it does have a bookcase with all books for $1.  I spent $2 for two books. The 2nd hand book scene took a hit a year ago with the biggest shop in Geelong closing down but the opposition, in the same street, was still open. So I rang them up before I lug my large tub of books in there. They have declared a 6 month moratorium on getting more books. Also their new policy is that if you bring in a book then payment is also a book. No cash.  The World of Books website I have used do not buy books. They are supplied by charities.  Charities were getting so many books that they were sending them to landfill, that's how World of Books got started.  So I think my tub will have to go to the Village Store.  There are 2nd hand stores in Queenscliff but this is all getting a bit 2nd hand.

I have written my initials on salient pages.

As I was loading the tub, items were falling out of the books, like a 1990 business card from MITS the first job I had there,  a pressed flower, a 1993 prescription for ventolin sprays. I was looking for that. And not to be left out another business card from a lifetime of entrepreneurship Debra Design.

I guess they are good bookmarks

I'll be bound

I mentioned a lack of reading material previously which is not true. As I look across to the book wall, there are three book cases each with six shelves containing maybe 40 books each, so there are over 700 books right there.  Reading a book for a second time seems to be an issue although I have done it before.  I took a closer look and found these leather bound volumes that I had never opened. I was expecting to find some sort of birthday inscription inside but there is nothing. I cannot remember where this book of Sherlock Holmes has come from.  I have read only one of these yarns before being "The Hound of the Baskervilles".  This compendium starts off with short stories, such as the Red Headed League which is a club for Rangas with the brightest red hair possible.

Missive or two

It is a cold day and I mean 12° this morning. It is still Summer isn't it? There is a box I have not delved into until today, as far as my project to take everything analog across to digital. This box could prove to be controversial.  I have selected two letters both of which were sent from afar before email was a thing. The first is from 1975 sent from QLD.  I think I was working while this lot were touring up North during school holidays. The second is from London where a budding artist was seriously boning up on the Masters in the mid 80s.

Note Christmas decoration & stamp

There were only two words on the back - Sister Leanne

The Afghan

Freddie Forsyth is a bit of a master at these types of thrillers.  This one uses all the actual history of  real events leading up to 9/11 but he puts in his own version of a disaster.  Not a bad read.  Too many bystanders are knocked off for my liking but I'm not the writer.  The bad guys never seem to get the same pain they dish out either.  I am scratching around for something to read now as I have some  stories where multiple volumes are needed and I may not have them all.  I might have to start using the library.  I am going to take a box load to the 2nd hand shop to make some space.

The Great Diversion

The latest engineering works have been completed regarding the storm creek that often spills over onto our beach and blows a chunk of it away into the bay every time a storm comes along.  Large amounts of concrete have been poured and an artificial bank raised at the key point.  Also truck loads of sand were dumped and spread to refill the gaps and top up the new embankment. It all looks good and now we await the next storm front.

sandy shore - sounds like a pop singer

engineered thusly

where water is supposed to go

2 hours I won't get back

I have been to these meetings before like around 16 yar ago and 8 yar ago and also today.  When is a person old? It reminds me of the committee at Boca Del Vista, all wearing floral shirts and arguing the ramifications of increasing the cost of scones.  The short history of Retirement Villages (RT) goes back to the 1990s.  These villages were born out of the baby boomers starting to hit retirement age and needing somewhere to downsize.  The contracts at the start offered low priced entry into the village lifestyle scene with the RT company taking a large part of its profit at the end or at the exit from the village. Hence the eight year holding rule whereby the money from the sale of the unit is held for the company's use for eight years after exit and then paid in full.  Most exiting families take a hit in order to receive most of the sale proceeds immediately.  A formula is used to work out an amount perhaps around 10% of the sale price which will be deducted. There are two other cost factors in selling the unit. The costs of refurbishment to an as new updated standard for resale and the costs, capped at 1% of the value, for sales advertising. These are the three amounts to be deducted from the final amount on settlement day.  A rough example would be for the sale of a $500,000 unit subtract $50,000 to compensate for the 8 year rule, subtract another $45,000 to bring the unit back to as new and another $5,000 for advertising. That will leave you with $400,000 in the pocket.

PS If you can be bothered, the two areas to save on these costs are endeavouring to bring the unit to as new with your own labour force and waiting out the 8 years after it is sold.  The less complex for us is to pay those amounts and pocket the rest. The company is generally never happy with outside contractors trying to do stuff to the units on the cheap.  It adds complications to the resale timeline.

These are the guys that bought three Stockland Villages

KG4435

This is the name of a Vietnamese restaurant in  Napier St where we went for a belated Timmy birthday since we were previously in Hawaii doing Ruby Tuesday.  Not sure why it is named after a registration number. It may be the number of the boat that took them across to Australia as they were the first Vietnamese boat people to arrive.  As for the food it was tasty and they gave a us a dish or two on the house.  All the Roberts' were there and Laura and Rick made it via the phone.  That was a long day and Asher was cooked before our meals were cooked so she was packed off to bed with her Mum. We have now made it to the Mantra where this room is complete with spa tub so I wil give that a go tomorrow.

Asher sells sea shells by the sea shore

Everything revolves around baby sleeping times. However mid-morning was the walk to the park so this was convenient but for wet swings and slides.  Nana volunteered to put her backside trackside to clear the way. After lunch there was another trip to the beach. This time there was only slight breezes so the umbrella worked well although the hour or so we were there was mostly in the water collecting shells.  The beach was busier than yesterday but very pleasant.

Deck Hands

Cool Dude

Shell we be friends

Asher and the Deep Blue Sea

There was a lot of cleaning and Asher proofing going on this morning and I probably did not need the added discomfort of dealing with one of the sliding doors. Eg replacing one of the roller wheels. Not simples.  Asher rolled in in the new Bianca car around 11:00am and after lunch it was straight over to the beach on an ideal 23° day.  Her latest approach is demolition, whether it is houses made out of blocks or castles made out of sand, it needs to be knocked down quicker than it went up.

Deep Blue Sea

Castlemania

Photos Frames and Printers

After we got back from Hawaii one of the things is getting wall frames up with a few highlights. My photo printer has been going down hill steadily but before I bought a new Epson I sent a batch away for snapfish printing.  The colour comparison with the old printer is like they were purple. I think the sunny location may be contributing. In any case the snapfish batch will be on display until some other trip brings out the Epson.  PS I threw away 10 unused cartridges with the Canon. The Lumix camera is back from the repairman as it got hit with a wave. I have used it to take a photo of the display. But the display is mostly using phone photos.

Shredding

Eurosport features a lot of winter stuff and the cool dudes often talk about shredding a run. I haven't worked out if they mean they have stuffed it up or done it well. I have been shredding for four days now.  I have come to the end of over 10 years worth of financial papers.  Anything like bank statements, financial reports, company reports, credit society reports, tax filings, accountant letters etc is what I shredded. The shredder works for 5 minutes maybe 10 if you are fast, then it needs to cool down for at least 2 hours.  The volume of paper increases by 10 times when you shred it.  The bags I have will not easily hide in the 240 Litre  bin and we have the bin police monitoring our every move. I have had to break down the mass into smaller bags.  It will take a few weeks to dispose of.

to shred is to shed

Vanilla Slice

Nothing like baking with alcoholic ingredients.  I tried a go at vanilla slices today. The recipe says these are eggnog vanilla slices. I think that flavour mainly comes from the Kraken Black Rum bottle we bought. YoHoHo.  I spent an hour or so buying ingredients and another hour on the baking for my 12 slices.  How many kinds of sugar are there? I used icing, caster and demerara sugar. There were three issues I had. The butter was not unsalted. I had trouble separating yoke from white and thirdly the main custard ingredients all went into the pot together when I was supposed to fold in at certain times.  Despite this, 12 tasty slices emerged from the fridge.  The pastry is crispy but the volume of custard seems to be a bit light on however they do the job.  Last tip use a serrated knife to cut into slices.

Blank canvas

Hot for now

Cold for later

Eurosport is back

After much deciphering of Optus websites, not only do I not have to spend $465 on a fetch TV box as Optus have sent me one for free, they have also reduced my bill by $5 per month.  Go figure.  It pays to regularly question your bills.  I needed to go onto a new plan. They just keep billing you under the old conditions if you do not change anything.  Eurosport is available to all as a free trial but I will need to pay $9 a month in future.  Elsewhere I located a subscription to Spotify at $12 per month. They kept taking this even though the cost had dropped to $10 p/m. This service never worked well for us anyway so we cancelled it and now I have $17 per month spare to cover costs.  I have set a race to record tonight. Back in business.

Blue Fish

Another good beach day today. I went over for around two hours and managed two swims this time, one with the camera and one without. The same fish are still in the same location except there were a lot more this time and they did not shoot off to hide either.  Good thing there were no spear guns around as they all were slow moving today. As a result of the office clean up 10 yar of financial documents need to be shredded. I have been at it off and on for two days. The shredder gnaws thru paper and staples but needs to switch off after 10 minutes due to over heating. Getting it to go again is the problem.

Stand Up Desk

If you have a mild back issue and you tend to sit at your desk for up 10 hours a day then you might get a bit of a tweak now and then.  Moving the computer down to the kitchen bench which is an ideal stand up height varies the back position nicely.  However the printer is upstairs and so are the two screens.  Why not convert the old desk into a Stand Up.  There are units readily available at office works. So you can now sit or stand at the desk.  Seeing we were there, my 10 yar old photo printer has been getting progressively streaky. It has worked well but no amount of nozzle cleaning has fixed it so I have replaced it with an Epson.  Mind you it is one of those all-in-one copier, scanner, printer, faxers which I swore off years ago but it seems there are no dedicated photo printers any more. 

before

after

Fishes

I have been perusing the handy Port Phillip Bay Taxonomy Toolkit.  This identifies everything in the water and there are two fishes I saw the other day which I have now IDed.  This must be like underwater bird watching.  The fishes are Zebra and Blue Warehou.  I'll become an ichthyologist yet. Do ichthyologists have a big year?  What is the group name for a gathering of ichthyologists? A swell of ichthyologists.

A still from above

Snow Queen

We are having a storm go thru but no snow. My reading has been intermittent with trips to Hawaii and such but I did finish this book yesterday, which was started on the plane three weeks back. There are some parallels with whales, in that the inhabitants of this book are divided into Summers and Winters, just like whales.  It is also like GOT where Winter or Summer can last generations.  In this case the Winter Queen has liked her power and tries to keep the throne when the Summer Queen rolls in after 150 yar.  However the good guys are on the job. This is another Hugo (1981) and often is the case, it is the first volume of a trilogy and I do not have the other two.  Just about every time a book wins the award, the success urges more volumes to appear, often years later.

Snorkel Day 2

Another ideal 26° day with clear warm water for snorkeling.  There was a breeze today effecting the umbrella. We had the beach mostly to ourselves although there were a few walkers going past. The snorkel showed some new fish. A large school of stripy fish who were a bit nervous. At first they stopped to look but then just had to zip off. We saw more rays and a jelly fish. The attached video is from yesterday so I am lagging behind. When we get back from the beach it's straight onto the deck. One of those exercise coaches has set up a class just below us. Maybe he thinks the council wont find him setting up shop here.

Clifton Beaching

I rode into Drysdale this morning in fog and rain.  Totally clapped out to the horizon. At chinese dentist time (Toof Hirty) we went down the beach and had one of the best afternoons. No one else except two other snorkelers at the other end.  Our snorkel swim was exceptional. Clear warm water and we saw four large banjo sharks (rays). The last was the biggest so far at least a metre across and the shark like tail showed spines extending along the body as well. The video is currently caught up in the Hawaii stuff. I will try to unravel it tomorrow. I do have some whales video  to attach today. This stuff was spectacular but I can only place a small clip here.

Geelong tour

Yesterday I left the chicken breast on the bench thawing for 7 hours. It was room temperature when we came back to cook it. Google says that any thawed chicken left at room temperature for longer than 2 hours is at risk of food poisoning.  I have had trouble for less so the chicken went into the bin. Hence when we were in Geelong today we found an Italian place called Lipari which had chicken bolognas the size of Italy.  We also found that the Kerley's auction house is up for sale, so unless the new buyer wants to run an auction, another stamp venue is going to shut. 

This was our Hawaii souvenir complete with thongs

Turtle Town

I have been unloading some more video from Hawaii. We packed the snorkel gear into our suitcases and awkward packages they are but we did use them a few times on two out of three islands. There was one spot on the Big Island but black sand makes for a murkier view. I have two clips here both from Maui showing the turtles. The first is below water at Kapalua and the second is on the beach at Ho'okipa.

Beach Engineering

Before we went away a big storm washed away part of our beach again. Numerous attempts have been made to get the diversion right where the water moves down the spillway not across the beach. This must be engineering attempt No 25 but give them credit, they are not giving up. The idea now is to place an artificial concrete bank in front of the natural overflow channel thus blocking the way. We shall see.  Since I was down at the beach I went for my swim despite the stiff breeze.  I think I was more blown thru the water than swimming it. I did extract another golf ball and two pieces of glass.

Whale Watch

I have had some time to check out this package of photos supplied by the on board photographer who accompanied us on the Whale Watch tour.  I have my own video as well but have not got onto that as yet.  Not sure exactly how the photographer was able to personalise the show as we are in it a few times and no one else.  It was easier to get us by ourselves as we perched over the bow wave and had the best seat in the house. Whales were swimming below our feet.

EuroSport demise

There was a rude omission when I turned on the TV this morning as I could not find the EuroSport channel.  I thought I would just reboot it, that always works. We called up the support person who said there was a contract issue and that an email had been sent to explain. I got no such email as I would have liked to complain but it seems they have cut the channel anyway. I bet it was being used more than ESPN.   Fetch TV has picked up the channel.   Most of my viewing was overnight recordings from Eurosport.  There is an APP but it is not available in Australia. In the meantime how am I going to get the cycling? The cycling season has started.  Once you buy a Fetch Mighty box the Eurochannel is $8.99 a month. I have to look into this.

JetStar

This was a rather civilized flight leaving at 8:00 am and arriving at 3:30 pm.  The in flight movie scheme was limited but I still got three movies into the 10 hours.  There must be a competition on who can do the best Joker role. Heath Ledger did a good one but the role has risen again like a phoenix and no batman to boot.  I also watched the pilot episode of Jack Ryan the TV show.  This looks to be a winner.  Everyman and his dog are making TV these days and you can't subscribe to it all. So Amazon TV will have to wait.  We drove back in smoky conditions again all the way. I thought all the smoke would be gone but the Sun right now is blood red with it all.

Sun Smoke

Balmy Nights

At home we are lucky if we get one balmy night a week during summer. Here every night the temperature never drops lower than 23°.  Do not bother bringing tracksuit pants like I did. Or jeans like I did. These are a waste of weight.  The laundry services here are slack. So we perfected a new cleaning regime. Simply air T-Shirts on your deck and let the Sun's heat cleanse them. Fold while still hot and crease the edges firmly.  Let sit for 24 hours.  Except for peeling apart the sticky bits you have perfectly cleaned apparel. 

Receiving Ice Cream in Sun cleansed T-Shirt

Lobbyist for Outrigger - note Sun cleaned T-Shirt

Snorkel Reef

We got the bikes out for another ride this time towards Diamond Head.  There is some parkland off the beach with much shade, a reef and many fish. Bonus. But we had no snorkel gear.  So we turned around, got equipped with our gear, called into the ABC for the tuna & egg sandwiches as well as a four pack of travellers.  People were feeding the fish while we were in the water. I remember this happening in the Philippines but not as frenetic.  The biki system worked well. We used around four of our five hours across the two days.

Coral Reef fish here

Snorkel Carrier

Waikiki

This beach has a lot to live up to.  For surfing it is excellent with long rolling waves also good for beginners. But in our case just go to Ocean Grove to learn.  The hotels back onto the beach so there is no road in between.  Also it is South West facing which is good for the Northern Hemisphere, like North facing is good for us downunder ie the sun sets over the ocean. Unlike Surfers Paradise where they have killed the Sun around 2:30pm with great shadows from all the hotels behind.  There are rocky ledges in the water here, so you have to pick your path but there is plenty of sand as well.  Overall I think Waikiki is a winner, especially with the Diamond Head right there but bring your own shade.

Meat Balls

I remember when going thru New York, spaghetti and meatballs was in every second restaurant. They invented it. We have been trying to track it down in Hawaii for two weeks. Then we found that traditional of all Italian establishments, The Cheese Cake Factory!  As with a lot of places here you cannot make a reservation, so they give you a buzzer and you wait at the bar if you can get a seat.  We waited 30 min which was not too bad.  We ordered one plate of meatballs between us and the NZ couple next to us said they should have done the same as I watch them flounder under the weight of food delivered to their table.  We had no room for cheesecake.

CheeseCake Bar - You can still get cheesecake

Biki Bikes

We went to the Biki bike station and ordered 300 minutes of bike time.  So this is a bike share scheme as the bikes we choose may end up being used by someone else. This was the multi ride option and cost us US$50 for our 5 hours for two bikes.  We took our time riding to Ala  Moana and went out to Magic Island and along the beach front there taking around 2 hours. Then we locked the bikes in a station there and the timer was stopped. I'll come back to this later. 

We had a look in the shopping Centre at Ala Moana. We  spent an hour just roaming to see if there was anything cheap.  (We are already over our stingy 20kg Jetstar weight limit). There were a few stores down below like Ross and Old Navy that were cheaper but up above was the same high end stuff.  This was the biggest shopping mall I have walked. Except maybe for the Dubai Mall but I was there for the tower not the shops.  We had fresh sushi for lunch then made our back to the Biki station. 

Our credit cards were no longer recognised so we could not release two bikes from their gaol posts.  We got thru to the support guy who said they automatically lock out the accounts after 90 minutes of riding because they think the bikes are being removed from their sphere of influence. We did not know about this rule. They obviously don't use GPS to track their bikes. We were only riding slowly and stopping for the obligatory photo.  He said normally they ring the customer but our post office SIM allows us to ring out but not receive calls.  This seems to be a double no phasement situation. So he turned us back on, we got our gaol post keycodes and I am typing this back in our room 60 minutes later.  I estimate we have 180 minutes left of our 300.

With BIKI Bikes along the canal

Diamond Head from Ala Moana

Bike route recorded

The Duke

This guy is a legend, the original Big Kohuna.  A multiple gold medal winner at the Olympics, invented surfing, starred in many Hollywood movies and was the Honolulu sheriff for 25 yar. We ate at his restaurant tonight. This was the best meal I have eaten on this trip. Pork Ribs. I have never eaten ribs ever before. Kevin Spacey has inspired me to ribs.  I also washed it down with Duke beer. This 40th anniversary lurk is a winner. From now on every trip is going to be a 40th celebration. They gave us desert which was a signature ice cream volcano with chocolate spewing out of its crater. We could not finish it but got close.

6 hours slow cooked

Ice Cream freebie

The Duke's Kohunas

USS Arizona

We had tickets to Pearl Harbour booked some months back.  They seem fairly relaxed about fitting you in if your time slot is missed but we timed it to perfection. We had the Jamie Lee Curtis narrated tour.  Our tip concerns your purse .  When you line up to place bags in the cloak room put your purse in as well or you will have to line up again.  We spent three hours touring the visitors centre as well as the boat ride out to the sunken USS Arizona.  This is one of those must see activities.  There are other ships and monuments near the centre but they will have to be for next time. The number of graves at the site is increasing. How so?  Surviving members of the crew are pledging their ashes to the deep thus joining them in a steady stream for the last 80 yar. There are only three to go each almost 100 yar old.

First on board gets a clear photo

Gun Turret Four