Why me lord??

Jan is talking divorce.   Almost everything is not going to plan and apparently it is “Jones luck”.  After applying for the phone line to be activated four days ago and being told by Consuela (in the Philippines) it would take 1-2 days, I phoned Telstra (that Australian company with a monopoly on the POTs {plain old telephone system]) to ask about progress.  Today Pablo informed me the application hadn’t been processed.  That meant spending another 20 minutes listening to the options (and up selling) whilst the money trickled out of the mobile phone account.  This time I was informed it would take 5-7 working days to activate the line.

Meanwhile, after giving us notice the tenant hasn’t moved out of our house.  Apparently he has nowhere to go and has decided to stay.  Moreover he hasn’t paid the last months rent telling the property manager to take it out of his bond money.  But the property manager doesn’t have the bond money, by law it gets deposited with the government rental tribunal.  In the meantime the council rates (tax) bill arrived.  The property manager didn’t pay it as he had no rent from the tenant.  The rates went unpaid and we have now incurred a financial penalty.

Someone doesn’t like me!

I’ve even received some bad coverage in the local press

In an effort to release some of my stress I went for another local walk.  This time it was through the linear park and lakes (actually ponds) which the houses back onto.

Readers I can’t end on a negative note.  Back to the bucket list and my solar array project.  I’ve placed an order online to purchase an energy meter.  There are three components.  The first is a clamp which will be fitted around the main electrical supply cable to the house.  The second is a small transmitter which plugs into the clamp and transmits the data wirelessly to a hub.  The hub connects to a router using a data cable.  The electricity used in the house is sent to a website where we will be able to view usage by minutes, hour, day, week, etc.  The information can also be downloaded into a spreadsheet.  The purpose of doing this is to work out our average electrical consumption by hour of day.  From that I’ll be able to calculate the required size of the solar array I plan to have installed on the roof.