The Kiwi Shop

My sister kindly gave me a copy of the eulogies from our mother’s 2015 funeral service which had taken place whilst we were in the UK.  Like dad, mum wanted to donate her body to science, however my sister and niece felt they hadn’t had closure after dad died and pressed mum to accept a funeral service.  Mum rather reluctantly agreed but only on the condition there was to be no “weepy or sobby stuff”!  My sister agreed telling mum her opening words would be “DING DONG the witch is dead!”  Apparently mum laughed so hard her false teeth fell out.  So readers you now know I’m not the only one in the family with a wacky sense of humour!

Before continuing with this post I have an announcement for Australian TV news reporter.  The word is “hour”, not “ourwaa”.  And commencing almost every sentence with the word “Now” is superfluous.  Leave it out and I won’t need to grind my teeth!

Work on the media server has come to a halt.  The five 3.5 inch hard drives won’t fit in the 5.25” hole.  Yes, they are too small and a bracket is required.  The brackets are very expensive costing approximately $12 each.  Being an absolute cheapskate I decided to make my own from some steel framing strapping I found in the garage.  Google Sketchup was my friend.

It looked OK so I made two and fitted them to the hard drives.

The other side of the hard drives connects directly to the case.  It seemed like a great idea but I discovered having all the drives pre-connected prevented them from being inserted into the case.  PLAN B.  I’ve bought mounting brackets via eBay for $1.39 a pair.

We had the police helicopter hoovering over the neighbourhood in the early hours (ourwaas for the news reporters) the other night.  Apparently there had been a large gathering of youths which had turned into an affray.  Our temporary accommodation is located in “Old Ballajura”.  Local history has it that the estate was designed and built for a large American mining company, but the project didn’t proceed and the homes were all sold privately.  Immediately south of us is “Summer Lakes” where we once owned a house.  This area is slightly more “up-market” with more expensive homes.  To our South-east is “New Ballajura” which has cheaper homes and tend to have more social problems.  To our west are the suburbs of Koondoola Girrawheen and Balga.  In the short time we have been back in Perth there have been a couple of shooting in this area.  Some people who live outside these suburbs refer to the gangs of youths who live in these suburbs as the KGB (initials of the suburbs).  Southwest of us is the suburb of Mirrabooka which has our nearest large shopping mall.  We’ve heard Ballajura locals refer to it as “Little Somalia”.  This is a rather interesting place to live.

This afternoon we drove 13km NW to Joondalup where I purchased a trailer plug adaptor from Jaycars (Maplin equivalent).  we have borrowed my brother-in-laws trailer and it has a round plug whilst our 4x4 has a rectangular socket, hence the need for an adaptor.  Next we drove to Dawson’s Nursery where Jan bought two thornless blackberry plants which will hopefully survive long enough to be planted in our new house.  After that we went to a special shop.

I was after some genuine Kiwi red saveloys.  None of those insipid UK or Oz saveloys for me.  I want the big fat, bright red, spicy saveloys unique to NZ.  Well they don’t import them <boo hoo>!! 

Yes Ade,  that’s our new silver Isuzu MU-X in the middle of the photo.

Next project is to make a temporary stand for the compound mitre saw.  Once that’s complete I can start making the woodworking assembly table.