I finally got the ticket for Molly's trip out here. She'll be coming out via Singapore on the 4th of August and will arrive here on the evening before her birthday. We're really looking forward to seeing her of course... and i'm taking her up to Frazer Island for about 9 or 10 days to do camping and hanging out. At some point we think we may go over to the Tangalooma resort on Moreton Island where you can stand in the sea with Dolphins and go out Whale watching. She'll be here for a month.
Daile was 'surprised' at the beginning of the week to hear that she had pulled another high marker out of her nether reg... an embarrassing 94%. Its a funny thing, but she seems to worry the mark up there... and was genuinely surprised that it was that high. The course is pretty heavy going, dealing in that particular assignment with, amongst other things, the re-uptake of dopamine from the synaptic cleft into the presynaptic cell... and how 'blunted' dopamine transmission is associated with individuals that have a history of heavy drinking. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter responsible for feelings of pleasure when it is displaced from the presynaptic cell into the cleft, and certain drugs are able to both induce displacement and inhibit its reuptake, inducing feelings of a high. We discovered separately that its also the case with smokers... and felt compelled to read around the subject. Like so many of these subjects, we have found ourselves entering into a fascinating and mysterious world of physical and chemical wonder. She's enjoying the work, but finds the calibre of the questions she has to answer leaves much to be desired, much as I did when I was doing my course.
Andrew and I have been drilling holes out for the fencing at Whitlam Drive today, and down at his house too. Its a petrol motor, with two handles a bit like the sort of thing you get on a lawn mower but wider, and with a 250mm dia auger bit on the drive shaft. It drills a couple of feet down through our hard as nails clay soil in less than 40 seconds. We managed to drill through the telecom cable, luckily though it was just for our house, not the neighbours! Tomorrow I'm putting in 18 fence posts using a bag of cement per post. I've never done it before, but apparently what you do is put the post into the hole and brace it vertical, put the concrete into the hole (dry) and then add water. Then, when the concrete is dry, (you get the quick setting sort for this) you bolt the lateral timber on to them and nail on the slats. Its great...I've acquired some really macho tools for this... like a vintage nail gun, which Andrew has given me, that he's replaced with a more modern and light version. This, for those of you unfamiliar with them is a large and heavy air driven glorified stapler..but for nails. This gun fires up to 75mm (3 inch) nails through solid hardwood in a 10th of a second. The recoil is quite a shock at first.
Tonight we went out to dinner with Cindy and Hilton at their new house in Indooroopilly. (Read posh area). Cindy is Daile's cousin who's just arrived in Brisbane from NZ. Hilton is an interesting man about my age, who's done some pretty amazing things, and until he decides what he's going to be doing for a living here, is working as a chippy for Andrew's company (that is the company that Andrew works at as a manager). Hilton did an apprenticeship in building, and has had a lot of experience in that field, but for the last 7 years he ran his own estate agency in NZ and as a result they are apparently in a 'good position' (allegedly...sorry Cindy!). Anyway, as a result, his hands and his muscles are considerably softer than they might otherwise have been, and he was telling me about a 'nail gun' that he was using the other week that makes my newly acquired (1988) gun look like a pop gun. They have a gun on his crew that fires BOLTS! It fires chemical bolts into concrete to a depth of 150mm (6 inches) !!! The process breaks chemicals in the bolt cartridge that glue the bolt in place. The recoil apparently blows your arm off, like firing a rifle with your arm outstretched!
At work this week, I've been finding the same as last week, namely that I'm buried under it all by about mid day Monday, and don't really surface again till Thursday lunch. As a consequence I spend the early part of the week doubting my ability to do the job, and the latter part feeling almost smug! I say almost because of course at my age, I'm too wrinkly of neck to really feel smug, and content my self with some kind of tentative short approximation.
Matilda and Phoebe have had a pretty good week. Matilda got a commendation for her poetry, and not to be outdone, Phoebe wrote some too, and insisted that it was read out to all and sundry at the nursery. Actually, it wasn't too bad! Both of them are going through a bit of spurt in interest, with Feeb suddenly 'getting' word formation like 'cat' and 'pat' etc, and Tild taking to communicating with us by spelling out her words to us rather than saying them.
I've spent a considerable amount of time over the last couple of weeks in the evenings, drawing up our house plans, into a fully worked out contour map. I've developed the contours from the survey we had done a long time ago now, having realised that until I'd done that thoroughly, nothing that I design would be worth much since it might not fit the land. In particular, the issue is that we have to extend the driveway about 30 metres up the hill and then it needs to become a turning and parking area. We've been warned that the single biggest factor that will take our money is excavation and building concrete retaining walls, so the house is on stilts as much as possible. We've engaged a structural engineer, and he's going to have a look at the developed design when I finally get it done, prior to going to a pre-lodgement meeting with the council. We're starting to feel like we're making some progress on this for the first time since we've been here!
Tomorrow, we're going to a meal with some other friends, (so a pretty unusual weekend in that respect, since we've not done much socialising for a while) and Hilary Rose (Daile's NZ mate from London) is coming to see us for a couple of days. She's been delayed flying out of NZ for 12 hrs due to snow in Christchurch, and Feeb was pretty disappointed as Daile and she were going to pick her up from the airport early tomorrow and she'd taken herself to bed at 6.30 so that she'd be ready!! Bless!
Josh is back in Thailand now, and I believe is in Bangkok prior to flying out to India. He's been having a 'reasonable' time, but both he and Emma are 'templed out' - referring to the number of them that they've seen. I heard that a highlight was a visit in Laos to the same temple that they filmed the Tomb Raider film in that is a remnant of a former civilisation, overgrown with trees. I've seen that in the film and assumed that the trees were dressed onto it and that it was all a set. Fantastic to think that its real .. nature just takes over if it gets left for long enough.
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