0706291300 The Cat - Free to good home

The cat.

Free to good home.
We put an add in the local paper for a home for our cat. We are very happy that our thirteen year old cat will now live with a retired old lady that will take care of her. We delivered the cat to her new home and Lori, the new owner came out to greet us. Lori is a Mori – the first clue was her tattooed face. Please excuse my ignorance here, is it called a Ta Moko or a Tupu? (I will gladly be corrected on this.)

This is a file photo what Lori may have looked like about 70 years ago.
I passed the cat over to Lori and the cat struggled for about three seconds and then settled into Lori’s huge Mori arms. The cat relaxed and stayed with Lori until we left.

The kids were sad when Lori rang, but the next day, just before we left, they seemed fine. I do hope that we have not imbedded some deep resentment in our kids and they send me to a home in a similar fashion when I am too old.

0706291200 Not Negotiable.

Our house sale has “fallen through” again. This is not altogether a bad thing. The buyers were plain silly. The contract was worthless – it depended on the buyer selling their home within 21 days and settlement within 45 days. There was no commitment by the buyers. They had a clause where they would not have to pay for the building inspection if I cancelled the contract. It turns out that their house has an illegal veranda built over an easement.


These people inspected the house as if I had just finished building a spec home for them personally. Then they made a list of what was missing from their imagined “dream home” and then tried to charge me $11,000 for the perceived shortcomings. They included $2,000 for a pool cover – I had never mentioned a pool cover in any advertising, conversations or promises. They seemed to think that I had to indulge their every whim and desire – including selling them a piano.

They replied, through the solicitor, that their proposal to change the contract was “not negotiable”. Did they think that I was going to take the contract to a bank and cash it as a cheque? The term “not negotiable” ended the contract. All I had to do to get out of their crazy terms and demands was to say “no”. They refused to allow any middle ground and as a result they have wasted money on a building and pest report for a house they will never own.

Expectations are a kind of prediction – some people can have wrong expectations and then be disappointed. I have heard that the happiest people are those that expect nothing. This sort of person is constantly pleasantly surprised by the smallest things.

0706240800 Less than one month to go.

The house has been sold again. The deal is not as good as we wanted – the buyers need to sell their house as a condition of the sale. We have a contract – the worst thing that can happen is a good thing.

The house has furniture that must go to rightful owners and the kids have no idea that all that stuff will not fit into one suitcase. The school holidays have started and now it is time for the kids to empty their rooms. Toys – it seems to me that kids grow to a certain age when the only toy that holds their interest is a computer. This is the age when all the plastic parts, cards, boxes and papers can be thrown away. My youngest son, who will be 11 in October, has reached that age. He has abandoned all other forms of entertainment with the introduction of a bargain priced laptop.

I gave notice to quit my job – four weeks to go. They have decided on a replacement – a contractor. The five year plan for floorspace and infrastructure management for the state of Queensland is now in the hands of a contactor that is leaving in 11 months.
My one-up” manager called me into his office and asked if I wanted a farewell morning tea. The guy can not even make a decision on holding a morning tea.

My dear wife, who is as a matter of fact, not just my personal opinion, a world class teacher, has left the school.

0705232200. The Most Technologically Advanced Timberyard on the Planet.

House repairs for the sale. The retaining wall needs to be replaced.
When my wife, who is, as a matter of fact and is not just my humble opinion, a world class teacher said that the retaining wall needed to be fixed, there was a mention of a reputable construction company and a reasonable price. At that stage I was looking forward to having the repairs. Somewhere the project was changed into a home handy-man project with me and our good friend and neighbour doing the job.
I have what I call “project panic” – it is an uneasy, uncomfortable feeling when a job has to be done but is not yet done. When I am committed to the task, but I have not even started it – that is when “project panic” is the worst. I get this project panic when I have make a meal for the family. I get it when I make the kids lunches in the morning. I get it a work when I am given a new project. It goes away when the job is finished. I have learned that the best way for me to alleviate project panic is to start the research and make a plan. Yellow pages and Google. Timber yards are not well known for their ability to take up the latest advances in technology – some do not have web pages or on-line ordering. Some did not even have an email address. I would have to talk to them on the phone the old fashioned way. I don’t enjoy talking to strangers, and I don’t like being questioned on subjects about which I know very little.
I wasn’t looking forward to calling them because I really do not know that much about timber. I picked a business out of the thousands available because their business name mentioned treated timber - the others just mentioned “landscaping”.

“I would like to buy 63 meters of treated timber for a retaining wall please”
“Yeah – what type of timber are you after mate?”
“Treated timber – 50 by 700 and in a convenient length”
“We do 2600 and 1800”
“Hang on – quick calculation - I’ll need four of the 2600 and about 24 of the 1800”
“Right then”
“Do you deliver?”
“Yeah, cost ya, $25 for local - $35 for further”
“Twenty five dollars... that is a bargain, I’ll have two at that price”
“What?”
“Is Friday afternoon convenient?”
“Yeah Friday is good”

He told me the price and I instantly knew why people choose to make a retaining wall from timber instead of something more durable like concrete, steel, old tires or discarded carpet. Timber is cheap – the stuff, and I mean this literally, really does grow on trees.

0705200845. Take me to the river, drop me in the water.

0705200845.

Yesterday, the fish that belongs to my youngest son, died. Although this is a bit of a relief that we did not have to find a home for it, it was a terribly sad occasion.
There are few options for a dead fish – bury, flush or bin. This special little fish would get a burial at sea – or at least a burial in the river.
Since we needed a break from packing, and it was a relaxing kind of Saturday, we decided to give the fish a decent funeral. It’s little dead carcass was delicately lifted out of its former watery home, resplendent with coloured rocks and full length mirror, and with as much dignity as we could muster for a dead Mexican fighting fish we gently wrapped it in some clean white paper towel. And then in a hygienic plastic bag.

Nearby is a mighty river that plys its way through the land dividing shires with authority, providing vital water for agriculture and has a convenient boat ramp. The sun was shinning, the birds were singing, the breeze was breezing – all was good with the world as we drove to the little place that would become a permanent part of our memory as the place where we had the fish funeral.

We stood at the waters edge, in the mud, under the shade by a tree and said a few words about the role of pets in our lives and how the happy little fish never understood that it was always looking at itself in the mirror – it would even go behind the mirror to see if the "other fish" was there. It did this every day for years. We found it amusing, the fish was probably terrified.

The sad little package of dead fish and paper-towel was lowered into the river while the gentle flow of water held it in a slow graceful turn. This event was not exciting enough for our youngest son - so he unwrapped the fish and put it in deeper water to be carried away by the current. He was quiet on the way home but said he would like another pet – an ostrich.

0705192200. We go to Hong Kong in 9 weeks.

Nine weeks until departure.
We have started packing the house. The school called and said that they are having some trouble finding a three bedroom place for us. We looked up the three bedroom units on the South side of Hong Kong Island and they are spectacular.


House for Sale.
We thought that we were smart by not using a real estate agent. We had a buyer sign a contract within one week of advertising. That is the job of the real estate agent – however the deal fell through due to a particularly picky building inspector.
The biggest mistake we made in the house sale was to change our add on domain.com so that it said “under contract”. We would have other buyers lined up – just in case.

The building inspection was harrowing. The inspector was a stocky little builder that was almost clever and had no social skills and a particular annoying trait of not knowing when to stop talking. I don’t know what a building inspection is supposed to do, but I am sure it is not to insult the home owner by picking on every thing that he can find – even if the house was build to standard in 1985 that does not apply today. I am sure that he is not supposed to persuade the buyer in a decision either way. For example – the building inspector correctly stated that the beams for verandah are supposed to be, according to the standard, according to him, 600mm apart. Some are 650mm apart. If he stopped talking after that he would have been fine. Instead he started up a fictional “what if” story about if there is a board with a knot-hole and if someone over 200kg steps on it, then they might break through and fall in up to their knees. Not a comforting image to put into the buyers head.
The electrician said that I have 4 circuit breakers that are made by a company that went out of business four years ago – am I supposed to watch the ASX for the business failure of every company that makes circuit breakers and then replace them?

The contract was cancelled for an unspecified reason – the buyer simply said that one of the four inspections was unsatisfactory. The buyer is an electrical technician that services medical equipment and is scared of earth leaks. He went white when he saw the 240V lights in the workshop simply plugged into the power point.

All the inspectors are fear merchants.

We are now replacing the retaining wall in the garden and fixing the leaking shower.

Speaking Cantonese.
I can ask questions but I can’t understand the answers.

0705032000 Selling the little car.

We have sold the house, now we are selling the cars.

We have a little Hyundai that we have neglected by not having it serviced for over 6 years.
We tend to run our life on a “run until failure” maintenance program.
Everything that has ever happened to that car seems to be caused by us – it has never spontaneously failed due to manufacturing defects.

The timing belt needed to be changed 100,000 kilometres ago.

It burns oil at such a rate that it never needs changing. Last year the engine started to cough and splutter so I changed one of the spark plugs.

I bought some new tyres for it the other day – the mechanic said “you certainly got your moneys worth out of these tyres” he said as he rubbed his hands around the tread that had worn down to the wires.

It has some kind of dent or scratch in every panel.

The radio doesn’t work.

Alex bumped a shopping trolley into the tail lights about 7 years ago.

I bought a new battery for it once.

We ran it out of petrol on a hot summers day and it ruined the fuel pump.

I overfilled the oil and the extra oil leaked out onto a rubber engine mount and after a few months the mount crumbled away – this made the entire engine move around so much that it changed out of fourth gear when we accelerated.

When my dear wife, who is, as a matter of fact and not just my biased personal opinion, a world class teacher, would arrive home - I could hear the ratchet as the handbrake was “applied” even when I was sitting inside the house. After a time the handbrake was pulled out of the floor. I complained to the dealer and they welded it back on for free.

It has served our family well, it has carried us to school and work diligently and tirelessly for years, we have laughed and cried while travelling as we stared out its windows at this great wide brown land while its little motor purred away taking us on our holidays, we filled its little back seat with boxes as we shifted house, it has carried our weekly groceries safely home in its little boot. It waits patiently for me everyday at the train station car park like a little dog with big moist eyes, staring into the distance for a sign that its master will return. The little car has remained loyal to me after my fling with a motorbike - we will sell it as parts to a junk yard because our registration laws will make it uneconomical to maintain.

Farewell little car.

0704242200 Real Estate Agents

The house is for sale and we have an inspection on Thursday at 5:30pm. We listed our house online with DIYsell.com and had the first call the next day.
Real estate agents are a mystery to me – I don’t understand how they justify their cost. We had an agent knock on the door and ask if we were planning on selling in the near future – I asked him what was it going to cost me to sell the house. He worked out that it would cost about $10,000.

“So that includes the legals and the conveyancing, all title searches and council approvals including an add in the local papers and a sign for the front yard?” asked me in a manner that must have seemed to him naïve and stupid.

“No, you will have to pay for the legal work, unless you do it yourself – and we charge and additional fee for advertising” was his smug answer.

“What does the $10,000 cover?” I ventured, expecting that a real estate agent was needed in the sale of a house. We do need real estate agents don’t we? Surely they are needed – don’t they have some legal powers like auctioneers? Nope. Not at all. Not even bleedin’ close matey. They are parasites.

“That is my commission” was his timid and slightly embarrassed answer.

“So I pay for everything that needs to be done, including advertising and then give you $10,000?”

“Yes, that’s right – but you can save $400 by doing the legals yourself”

I showed him the door, and then the driveway. He then tried to convince me that I should not only use a real estate agent, but that I should use him, as the best agent around, by showing me how much money he had taken from his last victims. One entry stood out among the others - $0.oo – it was from a colleague of his who could not be charged for “ethical” reasons.

For $10,000 I want it sold in 10 days with a penalty clause of $1000 a day.

He did not take up my offer.

references:

http://www.diysell.com.au/realestate/detail.asp?PropID=P16241&loc=Mt+Warren+Park+Real+Estate

http://www.domain.com.au/Public/PropertyDetails.aspx?adid=2006394401

0704201800 Two months to go.

Cantonese lesson on Tuesday night – I was wrong about Cantonese having one word for everybody else in the world. There is another prefix that means two or more people. “Dei” So a group of people would be “Nei dei”. My Cantonese class had to perform a small play to practice. First we had to write the play, then star in the play, write the theme song, sing the theme song… The group to which I belong decided to perform a parent/teacher interview. I was the child and had the only comedy line. “I live at home”. That is enough Cantonese for me for one week. I now have three months to learn enough to navigate, buy furniture and get a job in the telecommunications industry.
Cantonese for telephone is “Din Wah” it means “electric speak”.


My motorbike was sold today. In these days of scams, thieves, and blaggards it is hard to know who to trust. I must have rocks in my head to do this, but I sent my motorbike off in an unmarked moving van before the money has been deposited into my account. I believe that the bank will transfer the money overnight. Why does the bank do this overnight? Why does Santa and the Easter bunny work overnight? Why, in olden days, did the baker and the milk-man deliver overnight? The interesting question here is, where is the money – it left his account about 12 hours ago. The interesting question is interest. My dear wife, who is, as a matter of fact, and not just my biased personal opinion, a world class teacher, said that I was wrong to let it happen. She is right. I trust the guy. Tomorrow the money will be in the account and all will be well in the world. The guy that bought the bike called again tonight to see if all went well with the pickup. Apparently he is a boat salesman. He will be at the Gold Coast in May for the Sanctuary Cove boat show. His brother bought a K1200S today also. Same colour.

The packing boxes arrived. We now have a directive: everything we own goes in the box, the suitcase and a pocket. Everything else is sold, donated or chucked. No exceptions.


The carpet cleaner arrived today – I had forgotten all about it. All of a sudden I had to clean up the bedrooms of two teenagers, pick up my own things and shift all the furniture out of the lounge room. The stairs did not require any special attention. The house looks bigger with no furniture.

0704151600 Can you send the bike as an email attachment?

I received an email offer to buy my motorbike. I think that it is a scam.

• 
  The email is from a hotmail account.
  They want the bike for an “expedition” in New Guinea.
  They want a shipping address with a phone number.
  They want to send a cheque made out by the US federal treasury who are , so they claim, funding the expedition.
  The bike will be picked up by a courier, so they claim.

It is obviously a scam but I would like to see how far they can go without actually getting the hardware. I will have to meet with someone at sometime during the transaction.

0704121900 Road Trip

No Cantonese lessons this week, but I did have to explain some simple Cantonese words to the family on the farm.
I like the way the Cantonese language has one simple word for “everyone else in the world”. Regardless of gender and number one simple word for: you, them, those, He. She, ya’all, everybody – one word - Nei.

My trip to Melbourne was a fabulous adventure. I decided to adopt a “free range” approach to the trip planning. I would simply head south until I saw some water. If it was the Tasman Sea then I would go right a bit, and if it was The Great Australian bite then I would go left a bit. It was not that relaxing in practice – I had to make decisions on the correct, most efficient route while in a strange town, at a roundabout, often with full laden semi-trailers bearing down on me, with their exhaust brakes growling and wisps of smoke emanating from the trailer bogies. I sat in the middle lane thinking – Newell or New England? I went through Sydney. Rain, night, lost, Sydney traffic – it was a fantastic adventure. While riding in the rain through Sydney traffic, I was reminded of what it is like to really want to go home. Home or relief was 1000km in opposite directions. I was at the half-way mark in Sydney when I finally saw reason and bought a map.

I have heard of the interstate rivalry between the Victorians and the New South Welshmen – I didn’t think that it extended to the point that the road signs in New South Wales do not even mention Melbourne. That is how I ended up in Sydney – I just picked a place further south - which is also how I ended up in Canberra - which in turn was instrumental in how I ended up in the Snowy Mountains.

The gloves that my mum gave me 20 years ago were perfect – the trousers that I wear in tropical Queensland were doing a great job of covering my nakedness, but that’s all. I arrived at a motel in the Snowy Mountains at midnight, and due to shivering uncontrollably, I must have looked like I was either drunk of having an epileptic fit. I could hardly sign the book. The room had no working heater. It had an air conditioner – yes I checked if it was reverse cycle – it wasn’t. The broken heater was located under the desk and when I tried to operate the thing it merely blew out a whisper of slightly colder air. I had a hot shower and went to bed.

NSW have an interesting way of ensuring that all travelers slow down to less than 100km/h before every town. They, that is the NSW traffic authority, do this by installing a speed camera on the road into the town. A traveler simply meanders through this at 80km/h then speeds up again when they have passed the camera. The Victorians have a far more diabolical scheme - they have two cameras at a known distance and average the speed between observations. This ensures that hundreds of kilometers are covered. I hate the Victorian system, but I love how its done. There is nothing a traveler can do to escape. When confronted with such a scheme, you might as well just stop and have a picnic.

There is a certain amount of preparation in every project, either in the design or the implementation. The free-range approach to route planning means that the preparation time is spent in the autopsy – how to avoid the same mistake next time. The instructions for the return trip were simple and easy, they were given to me by my sister who wants to be, or may already be, depending on who you ask, a truck driver – she said, “take the Hume then take the Newell”.

0704041800. What colour is nine?

The Australians have a saying “what you miss out on at the swings you will pick up again on the roundabout”. The Koreans call this “Ying and Yang”. The French say “Some good, some bad”. The Chinese say “You bad boy – you go to jail”
I have 900 hours of sick leave at work and I quit in about 60 days. These seemingly independent facts will soon become relevant.

I arranged to work three day weeks with the aid of a powerful letter by a doctor. When questioned about this by a supervisor, I replied that it is personal. Within weeks of taking two days off every week I received a letter from the pay department saying they had audited my superannuation and I have been overpaid since signing an AWA in June 2000. They want the money back. Swings and roundabouts. Ying and Yang.

Easter holidays.
My long awaited life-long dream of riding a motorbike on a grand adventure will come true over Easter. The last time that I decided to ride a motorbike to visit relatives across an entire state and half way into the next one was called off due to bad weather. That was about 20 years ago. Back then, I was riding across the Moonby Ranges and it was freezing. The summer-weight and ventilated motocross gloves I was wearing were doing a great job of making me look good, but that’s all. I stopped on the side of the road and warmed my hands on the exhaust pipe of my Yamaha XT 600 and decided that I would have to do this on another day. A few weeks later my mum gave me, as a Christmas present, a great pair of leather touring gloves. They are gorgeous genuine leather with sheepskin lining. 20 years ago. The gloves have been kept in my sock drawer in 14 different houses since then. My secret plan was that “one day” I will wear them on my BMW touring bike and ride off for a fabulous adventure. It will happen on Friday.

Speaking Cantonese.
I don’t know how little kids can learn a language so fast. Kids can speak their native language better when they are three months old than I can speak Cantonese after six months. I can almost count to ten in real time.
Try this experiment at home – get some coloured pencils and write the word “Blue” in red, write the word “Red” in Yellow, write the word “Green” in blue - you get the idea. Now ask someone what colour it is. There will be a tiny delay while their brain processed the fact that the color is not the word. That is what it is like to learn another language – everything has to be processed twice. We did phone numbers in class on Tuesday. I kept thinking in Russian. My brain knew that I had to translate from English, but there was a half-a-second delay while my brain sorted it all out. The stressful part of the class is when we have to write our answers on the board. My approach is jump up with an answer that I know is correct and then appoligise for being out-of-turn. We had to introduce ourselves in Cantonese – I don’t speak to people that much in English. The next trick will be write the numbers in Cantonese and in a different color.

0703250800 Saturday – the day of work.

I had to match the color before I could paint the hallway. The hardware store can mix a can of paint in any color - the only problem is that I needed a sample. A sample of a clean bit. This means taking a piece of the wall to the hardware store. It needs to be the size of a 50c coin, although a 5c coin will do. If I have to remove a piece of the wall, I might as well take a bit that is convenient for me, so I chose a comfortable height in a well lit and ventilated area and cut out a neat rectangle. This sample was carefully put into a clean and sturdy cardboard envelope and packed into a sterile zip lock bag. This matchbox sized piece of paint was treated like evidence in a murder investigation.
The process at the hardware store is a standard issue application of computer wizardry. Amazing. They scan the color sample and the machine mixes the paint. Viola! – it is done.
The color matched so well that I can use the paint on small sections, with out having to paint the entire wall and the wall that joins on the that wall and the bit that joins that wall and so on until you find that have to paint the entire inside of the house including door and window frames. Then the outside, the fence and the driveway.

The house is nearly ready for sale – nearly. My dear wife, who is, as a matter of fact and not my biased personal opinion, a world class teacher, says that we will put the house for sale after Easter. That should give us about three months to find a buyer and grind as much money as we can from them. Negotiations will be simple – pay the advertised price.
We have found a place for our eldest son to stay in Australia while he finished his year 12. A great family from church that also have a son the same age. He will have his own car and an expense account. What a life. He had better do well in his final year.

0703242130 Yellow is one of the Windows 3.1 colors.

As you can see from the add on this page, I am selling my gorgeous BMW K1200S. I put it in for its 30,000km service on Thursday to make sure that it is good enough for some unknown buyer. I have replaced the oil, the coolant, the filters, the front tyre and the brake pads.

We are all familiar with the process of authorized dealers – you take in your car and they try to find something that they charge you $1000 to fix. Its like a game - except it uses real money. The BMW dealer called me:
“Your brakes are shagged” says the voice of the BMW qualified service technician. “Do you mean that the brake pads have reached the end of their service life? – or is there a problem with the ABS, the brake pressure servos or is it a mechanical problem with the mounting? Can you be more specific?.
Five seconds of silence.
“Umm the brake pads are worn down and the metal has scored the disk, you will have to replace it.” Came the reply.
I have a personal policy that when these people find a problem AND they offer to solve it by the most expensive method, then I will not give them the job. A scored disk is not a problem. The bike will stop. It might squeak for a few days, but it will still work.
“Is that really necessary?” I ask, knowing full well the answer is no.
“Well it….might umm…” replied the technician.
“You can replace it, but you will have to make it a gift.”
They are not acting in my best interest. First of all they try the oldest trick – the ol’ brake-disk-needs-replacing routine. I am insulted that they think that I am that stupid. They could have asked if I wanted it machined, or tell me that it will be alright until the next service or at least tell me the cost. He never once told me the cost – only that it was “shagged” and that I was going to pay for it.

I now have to update all my adds with the 30,000 km service completed with new tires and brakes. Next month I will ride it on a 5000km return trip to Victoria.

One day at work I was asked to research and then buy a data-projector. My research suggested that a Sony was the best deal at the time. The managers said that I had to buy one from our contracted supplier. My decision was overridden. The projector was “procured” from our contracted supplier at twice the price. A few days later one of the engineers asked me to look at the projector because they could not get the color right – it would not make the color yellow.
I tested it and sure enough, I could not adjust it to make yellow – it would make light green, but not yellow. 20 electrical engineers tried and failed. I returned it and they said that I should have bought the next model up – it makes yellow.
“Do you mean that out of the 4096 colors it claims to be able to make, that yellow is not included?”
“Well; it….might ummm..”
“One of the primary colors is not included?”

They replaced the unit with a more expensive one that makes yellow. It broke down two days later. An overheating alarm triggered an automatic shutoff.
I returned it, and now I get to the point of this story. When I returned the faulty projector, they said that I had filled in all the forms correctly. Now here is the point.
“Aren’t you ashamed that your customers know how to do that?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” As if this was a strange question.
“A customer should never see that form. Your managers should never see that form. If a customer brings back a faulty projector, you should be scratching your heads in bewilderment that one of your best products has actually found its way back to you in such a state. If there is a problem – you should go to them and replace it, apologise for the inconvenience – then take the faulty one away.”

After that, when it stopped working, I would answer with: “Your problem, I wanted a Sony.”

p.s. Electroboard have stopped selling LightPro projectors.

Reference:
www.electroboard.com.au
http://www.sony.com.au/homecinema/catalog/product.jsp?categoryId=22033

0703212100 We live where?

We have four months today. My dear wife, who is, a matter of fact, not just my biased personal opinion, a world class teacher, called me at 11:00 to say we have exactly four months to go.

I had my weekly Cantonese lesson and it was going well until I had to remember the word for “New Zealand”. My mind went blank and the class was looking at me. I would be better off not learning any Cantonese and pretending to be deaf. I keep saying things like: “You can hear I’m Cantonese” and “You can’t hear, I’m not me”. The Cantonese teacher, Ma Tai Tai, says to not be offended when the locals laugh at me, it will not be because they think I am stupid, they will laugh because I will be saying something funny.

I bought a Cantonese phrase book to help – I would recommend that if anyone wants to learn Cantonese, they should get a language course with a tape or CD. The way that the language books write the words phonetically is like learning a second language so that you can learn a third. There are a multitude of ways that the various companies try to use symbols to indicate the correct tones. They use phonetic romanised Cantonese, but they are different for each publisher. There are also variations depending on the target audience – one book has examples for ‘young people’ that are saying completely different things.

A language book by itself is useless without a recording of how to say the words in the right tones. Cantonese uses sounds that do not naturally occur in English.

Cantonese has the same word for ‘Australia’ and ‘Beer’. To the Cantonese speaking Chinese people, Australia is ‘Beer land”.

0703200530 Cantonese classes on Tuesday nights

Learning Cantonese.
I look forward to my Cantonese classes on Tuesday nights. My goal today is to learn how to greet Ma Tai Tai in Cantonese with something witty and intelligent. The Chinese, according to the University of Queensland course notes, don't have a way of saying “good afternoon”, but instead they greet each other with a question about what they think they are doing – for example, I would greet Ma Tai Tai with the Chinese version of “Teaching us today?” or “Have you been shopping for Dim Sun?” This way of greeting someone from Australia, with a question about what they are doing, would prompt a response like: “Where's your badge constable?' or “Do I ask you about your love life?”

0703181700 Handy-man jobs.

Cleaning up the house for selling.

Handy-man jobs around the house are satisfying to complete when I have the right tools, a budget and someone else who knows what they are doing.
Our good friend came over to help me do some handyman jobs on the ever increasing to-do list of things that must be done before the house can be listed for sale. I had to replace a timber step and replace a tile on the bottom step. The tiles for the bottom step are no longer available so I decided to replace all the tiles with paving bricks. It looks better and is not as slippery.
The timber steps needed to be replaced and the others needed painting. The undercoat was a hideous florescent green. My dear wife, who is, as a matter of fact and not just my biased personal opinion, a world class teacher, asked upon seeing the work in progress, “Whats the deal with the steps?”
As a result of the timing of this work the whole family were not allowed to use the stairs and also not to use the bottom doorway – we were trapped by wet paint and wet cement. Obviously we just took bigger steps to go through the bottom door.
Here is a link to the steamer trunk on ebay:
I have no bids, but there are a 4 people watching and at least one person asked for its dimensions.
Or search here - Listed in category: Home & Lifestyle > Furniture > Bedroom > Dressers, Drawers, Chests

070316 I know that I don't know.

Learning Cantonese in five months.

I had another Cantonese lesson today and noticed something about the character of the Chinese people and their language - the Chinese seem to always refer to themselves in the positive. For example – we say “I don’t know” or “I don’t think that I will go” or “ I don’t think that you understand. The Chinese say – “ I know that I don’t know” or “I know that I will not go” or “Can you, [can] not understand?”
The news today reported that the Chinese have passed a law that allows them to own private property. I know that I don’t know how this may effect the economy in Hong Kong, but I know that I know that I want to go – can you, not understand?

Thursday:
What I planned to do: –

· Paint the bedroom.
· Cook a chicken dinner.
· Get a passport picture.
· Drop off a visa document.

What did I do:
I was sort distracted – but I did cook a chicken dinner.
It all started to go awry when I could not remember my brothers birthday that was needed for a visa application. I know that I don’t know why the immigration department of the Chinese ruling party want to send my brother a birthday card. A simple family-three-generations group sheet could have solved that problem but it was easier to call my sister and ask her. While I was on the phone I remembered that I had her violin that she received as a present when I was five. I decided to return it promptly and post it immediately. The violin distracted me from taking all the important the forms with me.

Friday:
What I plan to do:

Paint the bedroom.
Make spaghetti for dinner.
Drop the kids off at ballet.

What I did do:
I was more determined and organised.
· Painted the bedroom.
We are now one step closer to selling the house. The room looks great, like we are in a new house or a hotel room or a new hotel room. I would have never finished the painting if we were not leaving. I always imagined that I would have plenty of time to fix up the place. Cleaning up the house so that it is ready for sale reminds me of renting a flat and the owners are coming over for the six-monthly inspection. Those inspections are so degrading.

· Made spaghetti for dinner.
I made a standard issue camp spaghetti and cooked it all day in a crock pot.

· Dropped the kids off at ballet.
I often get a can of lemonade and a mars bar when I am waiting to pickup the kids from ballet and one day when they came out of the class they saw me with the goods. I stood frozen in my tracks like a rabbit staring into the headlights of a truck while they descended on me asking if they can have some. I bought them all their own and it started a tradition. Today I let them catch me with the goods again. As they climbed into the car I said that it would be rude of me to finish my drink in front of them. They were so polite and said that it doesn’t matter – that is when I pulled out the shopping back with enough for everyone.

As part of divesting ourselves of all worldly goods, I put our steamer trunk on eBay. The steamer trunk needed a story to make it interesting and appealing to a potential buyer. link - http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ih=015&sspagename=STRK%3AMESE%3AIT&viewitem=&item=250094280073&rd=1&rd=1

0703142200 These are a foo of my favorite things

I finally started my Cantonese course at UQ.
Lesson one – choir practice. The Cantonese language, sorry dialect, can be described as a language made by singing. We studied two words for two hours – foo and fun. There are five tones and when the whole class practice a word together, it sounds like a Chinese version of the Sound of Music.

Fooo - a fear, a fear of frogs,
Fooooo - some trousers full of legs.
Foo - some wine that turns you red
Fooor - the flat spot on your head.

And so on.

The language has a logical word order that makes sense when it is explained from the Chinese perspective. There are no plurals.
For example if you have, say, a car, then it should always be called a car. If you have two cars then why should the name of the first thing change from car to cars because the same thing is next to it, or even more confusing, if you happen to be the legal owner of more than one and even the other one is not in sight. You would tell someone that you have "cars". To the Chinese way of thinking, this is like changing the name of your first child when you have your second. Things are always called the same name.

Even though there is no alphabet, they have 19 sounds that make the language. English has 40 sounds (some say 41).

There are 12 of us in the class and all are learning Cantonese due to a wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, girlfriend or lover. One has a Vietnamese husband and would like to speak to her inlaws in their language, another has met a girl in Hong Kong and another boy would really like to.

I have a friend at work who went to China for work, met a girl, fell in love, returned broken hearted to Australia and then dyed his hair black before returning to China to meet her parents. He learned Mandarin, the official Chinese language, and is of the opinion that Cantonese sounds like chooks squabbling. His reasoning is that Mandarin is "better" because it has nine tones, while Cantonese has only 5. Why he finds this important may become clear to me later, but for now five ways of saying “foo” is enough of a challenge.

For all the fuss the Cantonese language makes over the tones, it is remarkably tolerant of what letters are used. The letters “L” and “N” seem to be interchangeable. I was learning from some tourist tapes and learned the phrase “how about you” (Nay ne) – then our Cantonese instructor, Ma Tai Tai, pronounced it as “Lay Lee” and said this was acceptable. At this stage I really didn’t believe that I was getting my moneys worth from this. After comparing notes to the Lonely Planet Guide I found that Ma Tai Tai is correct. In a convoluted way, I was sure that the problem was caused by Ma Tai Tai having a Chinese accent while she was saying the Cantonese words while speaking English. If I know what I mean…

0703112230 Where are my keys?

We have decided to go to Hong Kong five days earlier. The school at which my dear wife will teach has given us three days in a Hong Kong hotel – we will pay for another couple of days. The practical side of this means that we can all go together as a family on the first trip. My eldest son has to finish year 12 in Australia in November. We are going to arrange for him to finish the last week of the term four days early and then be with us for the two week break in August. He then has to return to Australia to complete the last term of high school while staying with a family from church. He will have a car – our 2002 AU III falcon – as a “P plate” driver.
This may be a challenge for him. He will be trusted to stay with a family church with his own car, drive himself to school and other commitments while studying to successfully complete his year 12 certificate.
We have yet to ask a family at church if he can stay with them. It is on our “to-do” list. It is not a subject that we can bring up easily. We thought it might be easier if we put an add in the ward newsletter –“ Free to good home – one cat and one boy. Cat has own food, boy has own car.”

For our move to Hong Kong we will have to pack as if we are going on a week long holiday and then pack up the house as if we are moving. Seeing as we are selling all our worldly possession, we roughly estimate that 12 packing boxes would be economical. The kids get one box.

In any other normal move, the kind where we have simply shifted to another city or in some cases a few kilometres within the same town, I simply loaded the car with boxes of stuff and ferried them to the new place until it was done. There would always be a strange box of stuff that missed out on being packed – it might be the cleaning chemicals under the laundry sink, or the contents of the dryer or even a box of books and papers in the garage – this time there can be no other stuff. We pack for a holiday, then pack for moving, then clean the house for settlement and go to the airport. This move raises some interesting administration questions: Do I take the mop and bucket to the airport? What will I do with the vacuum cleaner? I have thought about hiring a mini-skip and leaving it in the driveway for the last big cleanup into which I will dump all the stuff that is no longer economical to maintain.

We have decided that nothing in the kitchen is worth taking. Every appliance will be cheaper to replace than it would cost to send over. Most of it was made within site of Hong Kong in China. There will be no box of groceries, no esky with the frozen food, no box of half used condiments and no box of heavy box of pots and pans. All will be replaced on arrival. Everything.

When we are at the airport waiting for the plane, we will have no keys. No keys for the little car, no keys for the big car, no house keys for the upstairs doors, no keys for the downstairs, no chapel key, no keys for the rental property and, for me particularly, no keys for my motorbike. None.
We will have everything we own in our suitcases, a few boxes of personal possessions on their way via courier and the largest number we have ever had in the credit column on our bank statement.

0703102000 Saturday is handyman day.

Some friends from church dropped in at 9am to see if we had anything left over from our garage sale. The house was in no fit state to receive visitors but seeing as we are all friends I invited them in. They wandered through the house as if it was a Myer store. They picked things up and looked under them for price tags. They measured the fridge. They asked if I would sell the stockman coffee table. They asked how much for the piano, but stopped talking when I told them. They asked me if that was the only dining table we had. I sold them a writing desk and gave them a bookshelf. The price sticker was still on the writing desk from the garage sale and so they insisted on paying. I felt a little awkward because I have already called lifeline to have the stuff taken away.

Today I was talking with my dear wife - who is, as a matter of fact, not just my biased opinion, a world class teacher - and said that it is time to put the house on the market. “But I want to fix it up first” was the reply. “Dear wife, it is time to sell. It is a quarter past March already”. My dear wife then finished the curtain project that has been in the boot of the car for two weeks waiting to be taken to a professional for help. After dinner she continued scrubbing the walls with sugar soap which is a tradition when moving out of a house.

Today I replaced the shower head with a new water-saver and the kids don’t like it. Water restrictions allow 140 litres per person per day. I have asked the kids to have navy showers. My daughter complained the shower-head does not let enough water to come out to wash her hair and that she will have to use the sink. My eldest son has already worked out how to adjust the flow so as to make the water-saver function useless. I think he just takes the whole shower-head off.

I replaced the screen door downstairs. It is a fun job when the right tools are used. Get the little wheel-on-a-stick and enjoy it. Don’t try this job with cutlery.

The key to any project is the budget - a plan without a budget is a wish.

References:
Water saving and level five restrictions.http://www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/BCC:BRISWATER::pc=PC_1396

0703092130 You light up my life.

What did I do today to help us get closer to Hong Kong?

Passports.
I picked up another passport today. We now have four out of five. The passport office was not so intimidating today, the place has become familiar, the strange computer screen at the front door was cooperative today and it welcomed me by name. One small problem – only one of two passports were ready. Due to their efficiency, the other passport has already been posted and is due to arrive on Wednesday next week. Handy tip for getting a passport – if they ask for a departure date, tell them that although you may be departing in a few months, your visa application needs to be in by next week. It must be a trigger for them to make your request happen faster. Don’t ever tell them that you are organized enough to make plans 6 months ahead. The passport people are your friends. The friendly and courteous staff asked me for some identification. “ I have the ultimate in personal identification”, toots me. “I have (dramatic pause) an Australian Passport! “ and added a footnote that it was issued by this very office.

Fix the house.
I took the afternoon off for some “personal administration” and went to the hardware store for a few things that I need to fix up the house. I needed a light fitting for the passage – the last fitting was cooked into a crumbly powder from the heat of a new low power globe. I know enough about 240 volt AC power to know that I don’t know enough about it. My eldest son told me that the earth leakage circuit breaker does not protect the light circuit. I didn’t know that. He is a clever young man and I wonder what else he knows - do the science teachers tell kids about this at high school? I have worked as a telecommunications technician for 20 odd years and I am familiar with plugs, sockets and connectors and so I should be able to install simple light fitting that has only two wires – one of which can kill me. The first surprise came when I saw that the fitting has four connections. AC mains has three wires – what is the fourth connector used for? I carried on regardless by duplicating the previous connections and, standing on a chair, in the semi-darkness, with my trusty screwdriver, tried see the tiny markings on the back of the socket that are written in brown on a brown background. Active, Earth and Neutral – connected. Now I’ll see if the light works – I put the globe in and closed my eyes in case it exploded. It lit up instantly. Great, it works - and then it occurred to me with a sinking feeling - I had been working with live wires.

references:
wiringrules.standards.org.au/faq.html
http://www.dfat.gov.au/index.html

0703082100 Taxi !

The family had the missionaries over for dinner tonight, one of which has worked in Hong Kong and speaks Cantonese. I can only say a few sentences in Cantonese, and there are limited subjects in everyday conversation in which I can practice. I can almost ask someone what country they are from, and can understand their answer if they are from China, Hong Kong or America. The subject came up regarding what job I will have in Hong Kong – “…you can be a Chinese taxi driver” meaning I could drive a Chinese taxi. This gave me the opportunity to use a sentence that I thought I would never use. While listening to the Cantonese language course, I have endured the torment of having to listen to endless repetition of “Say you are an American” or “Say ‘I can speak English.” Well this time I had the chance to answer in Cantonese and I said, “I am not Chinese”. My dear wife, who is as world-class teacher, and that is a matter of fact, not just my opinion thinks that I am way ahead of her in learning to speak Cantonese.

After dinner I made a spreadsheet that counts down the days to departure. We were surprised to see that we have 134 days to get ready. Preparing the house for sale has now become "less than relaxing". We accelerated the divestment of all worldly goods by giving the missionaries a slightly used scented candle.

0703072115 - Do zebras have black stripes?

The passports for the kids started to arrive in the post - my daughter's passport arrived first - all was good except it had the photo of my son. The passport with my daughter's name had my son's picture. My son's passport has not arrived yet and it probably had my daughter's picture but for all we know it could have a picture of Joe Bloggs.

The passport office is a remarkable place - located on the 4th floor of a non-descript office building in the city. Stepping from the elevator, a visitor is greeted by a sign that says "Welcome to the passport office of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade - by appointment only." As if to say - if you don't have an appointment then kindly leave now. The entrance to the majestic hall for the customer relations counters is dominated by a strange freestanding computer screen that both invites and challenges you to gain entry by entering your appointment number. There are several ways to make customers welcome, this is not one of them.

The message on the screen is simply says "Enter your appointment number" in bold letters and in fine print gives instructions on who to call if you don't have one and the directions to a phone not more than two meters away that will automatically dial the receptionist.
"Hello, I am standing in the passport office and I would like make an appointment" says me in my best this-is-stupid voice to the helpful and courteous staff located somewhere else in the known universe. I was given a simple two-digit number and then tried to enter that into the strange freestanding computer screen that both invites and challenges you to gain entry. There were 12 spaces available so I used the first two spaces. It gave an error message. I used leading zeros and it gave an error message. I read the instructions and tried again and still caused and an error. I asked the guy behind the counter who had been watching me go through this absurd procedure what I was doing wrong. "Oh, you have a queue number already," he said and pointing at a completely different screen " your number will show up there.”

The passport office is different to that of other departments. What made it so different was the fact that there was no one else there. There was no queue. There were no other people waiting. The place was empty. I had to wait for my number to be called. Once at the counter I was told to fill out a form 2B – in front of them, while the staff waited. It was a photocopy of a photocopy so the lines were a bit skewed – and this was odd because they had insisted that my signature must remain in the box.

The story unfolded and gradually formed in the mind of clerk at the counter like a miniature mystery. There is a problem with the passport – not his passport – his kid's passport – the kid doesn’t have his passport – he has one passport and the other hasn’t arrived – the passport has the wrong name – it has the wrong photo – whose passport has the wrong photo? – the daughter's name is on the son's passport – now I know whodunnit.

“We will have to keep this” they said as if I was going to use it for my hybrid Frankenstein child that I was planning to make with the brain of one child and the outer skin of the other. They suggested that maybe I had made a mistake with naming my children. It was perfectly reasonable for them to assume that a boy would have such an obvious and blatant girl's name. There are some parents that do such things to their children. Ask any man that has been forced to grow up with the name of “Kerry”.

0703042100 Good morning, that is a nice sunset.

There is a missionary at church that worked in Hong Kong I have been practicing my greetings so that I can say hello in Cantonese. When I saw her this afternoon, I mustered up the new words and in my best Cantonese said "Sue Jer, Jo-Sun" which meant that I bid her a good morning at one o'clock in the afternoon. Apparently the language course that I am doing does not cover meeting people at any other time than in the mornings. Maybe in lesson three it will cover the remote possibility that people may want to meet in the afternoon. "No, you mean "Meoor - Good Afternoon" was her reply. I had practiced that line since Tuesday. She then said five more things that I can't remember for the other times of the day. I pressed on with my excuse which is, in Cantonese, "Noor sic tan yet tee quong tong waah" - I can hear a little Cantonese - this elicited a yelp of delight from the Cantonese speaking missionary. My number one son standing nearby asked what I said and the missionary began explaining to him in Cantonese! I can only guess why she started speaking Cantonese but I would like to think that she felt comfortable and at home and was able to be understood. Maybe this is why people take the effort to learn a language. Learning an entire language is more than remembering what new utterances replace our utterances - it shows that one is prepared to fit in, to contribute, to make the effort needed to join them.

Cantonese is the second language that I have tried to learn - the first was Russian. I learned a few words of Russian when I was in the army as an artillery signaller in the 1980s and then again later when I borrowed books and tapes from the local library. I have never been to Russia, and as a soldier in the 1980s it was my prime goal to never ever go to Russia. Ever. Back in the 1980s a soldier visiting Russia could end up imprisoned, seriously embarrassed, killed or all of the above. I learned Russian at two different times in my life and for two different reasons. The first time it was how to stay the hell away from them and their incredible number of nuclear bombs. The second time it was to understand what my number one son was going through while he was trying to learn English.

Bigots have a saying, and they state forcefully with conviction that an immigrant must speak their language. Maybe they see the effort of learning a new local language as a sign of respect. In return, a bigot will reward their efforts by withholding all hostilities. I worked with a man, an adult in his thirties whose intelligence was sufficient that he was actually able to join telephone wires, who strongly believed that anybody who did not speak English should not be allowed into or remain in Australia. I asked him why he had such a strong belief but he was unable to explain the reason or purpose to either me or himself. In his personal model of Utopia, in which he was the supreme and only leader, he made a grand magnanimous gesture of allowing the English speaking children of immigrants to remain in Australia - albeit under home detention. And only if the English speaking children have jobs.

Internet names are used in this blog.

references:
http://www.cantonese.ca/
http://www.armscontrol.ru/start/rsf_now.htm

0703040700 Saturday Morning Cartoons

The sunscreen song says that the real problems in life are "apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday" - we received a letter from the school in Hong Kong. The enrollment papers for my daughter and son included an innocent looking statement that took us by surprise. It was one sentence that could de-rail the entire train to Hong Kong. It calmly said: "Please note that [your son] will be required to sit a pre-entry test; would you please advise when he will be in Hong Kong so we can make the necessary arrangements". I thought to myself, "What do they want him to do?" What if he doesn't get in to this amazing expensive school? Surely the whole move to Hong Kong does not depend on the ability of my 10 year old son to multiply 3-digit numbers? We had better make sure that he knows how. Actions stations. My dear wife, who is, as a matter of fact, not just my biased personal opinion, a world class teacher, started our son on a fast track to put our son comfortably in the acceptable range of the strict and foreign entry requirements of Hong Kong's finest private school. He is smart, bright, imaginative, and has the attention span of a typical 10 year-old that is bought up on Saturday morning cartoons. The entry test goes for two hours.
My dear wife, the world class teacher, found a CD with the multiplication tables sung in a variety of styles including a hip-hop version of the three times table - we then bought our son his own mp3 player. The first practical test of his multiplication tables came when he asked me how may songs can it hold.

"Well, you can work this out, a song is about 5 meg and there is about 500 meg available - so the question would be - how many fives in 500?" There was a slight pause as he wondered if this was a trick question, could it be this easy? His answer was deliberate, not with a question mark or as a question itself. He said with confidence "One Hundred".

We are going to Hong Kong and he will have a new MP3 player to listen to on the plane.

Saturday morning - clean up the yard.
Saturday morning was spent with number two son shoveling rocks. My dear wife bought a tipper load of river rocks and had them dumped in the driveway. Our simple task was to put each rock in a nicer place. When a rock would roll away, we would pretend to be in Hogan's Heros or Hitch Hiker's Guide and when we captured the escapee We said things like: - I found another one trying to escape! Ahh well done number one - take it prisoner and we'll make an example of it later...

- we then put it aside from the others rocks while we decided on its fate.

Before and After:















We now have a new family saying - "This is harder than raking rocks."

Online names are used.
references

The Sunscreen Song. : http://www.bondon.com/sunscreen_song.html

0703020540 - Lesson one for the fourth time.

What did I do today to prepare to live in another country and speak a different language?

I have learned to arrange the few words that I can speak in Cantonese into strange sentences.
My passport is ready. Official documents are ready for the big adventure.

Vaccinations against Hep A and Hep B for the whole family. Didn't hurt. There is something real about the fear of needles. My daughter was conspicuously stressed and could not be pursaded to be otherwise. As a young woman, she can understand that vaccinations are important to her long-term health and it is a requirement of entry in Hong Kong.
As a society we ask that doctors not only cure us of all diseases, but that they do this in such a manner that is convenient, painless and where possible not at all unpleasant.
I can see that it is not natural to deliberately stick a metal instrument into your skin, however the benefits far outweigh the inconvenience.

My daughter has a real, but irrational fear of needles the same way that I have a real but irrational fear of clowns. I also have a real and rational fear of spiders because spiders can kill me. This is where bravery in everyday life kicks in - bravery, we are told, is not the absence of fear, it is the ability to overcome it - however when it comes to clowns, I avoid them, particulaly the unpredictable clowns that work in the city mall. They don't follow any of the social skills of a decent society. They do all manner of unspeakable things to embarrass passers-by and then make the whole crowd laugh at them. I think that there should be a simple law that if a person is dressed as clown they can no longer expect to be protected by the laws of the land.


Looking for work as a telecommunications technician in Hong Kong:
It is an official policy of the telecommunications company for which I work to NOT write a reference when leaving. Managers may give a personal reference, however it is not to be on company letterhead. There are some distinct differences in my workload compared to the other network planners. They have been asked to produce a strategic plan for an exchange at the rate of one per month. I have been asked to produce 25 per month. The manager said that I should give it a go and we can review the progress -"If its too hard we'll look at it then" says he, "if its too hard I'll just leave" was my witless quip in reply. There will be no redundancy payout for me. The recent stock market fall has put me about $1000 down when I sell my company shares. I am not motivated by so much by a love of money, but a love of providing for my family.

0702282040 Redundancy

Progress towards the move today:

1. Repair a computer so that it can be sold.
2. Ask for a redundancy at work.

The local computer shop has a website - would you use a computer shop that does not have a website? If they can't get online then they can't be too interested in computers. I could have ordered a new drive online and had it delivered in a few days, but seeing as the shop is on my way to work, I stopped in to buy it the old fashioned way. The shop is set up like an internet cafe' and all the ordering is done online! Customers go to a computer in the shop to order online via their webpage and then pickup from the counter. This makes sense to me - when I buy a hard drive, I already know what it looks like, I only want to know the specifications. The 250GB hard drive that I bought today looks exactly the same as a 4MB hard drive I bought in 1980. This shop has a good idea. There is very little to see on the showroom floor, just advertising. On impulse I bought a PCMCIA CDRW for my laptop because it was too good a bargain to leave behind. I know that later in life I would think back on that moment and wish I had that little CD writer to go with my 10 year old PIII laptop. I can back up my mail from my work laptop now.

Redundancy at work.

I work for a telecommunications company that made over 8 billion dollars profit this year - but there is no money in the budget to lease a laptop computer for $22 a month. I approve payments to our competitors in the millions per year, but my computer is a second hand 10 year old PIII that cannot process signals from a GPS and a CDMA phone at the same time.

So today I took advantage of an opportunity to point out to my employer that I could be made redundant. I would like to leave the company with no more than what is rightly owing to me and I put myself in a moral vs legal dilemma. Although my wife has a contract of employment at a school in Hong Kong, I am under no legal obligation to leave my current employment. There is no legal reason that I have to leave my job. My spouse and I are, according to the law, two separate entities working for different companies. If my employer decides to make my position redundant, then it would be to my advantage.

The moral side - if I know that I am leaving the company, then is it right to ask that I be made redundant and expect a lump sum for leaving? If I were to be open and honest and declare my intentions that I am leaving in 5 months then I beleive that I would have no chance of a redundancy payout. It would also force my manager to act in a certain manner with this knowledge. If he does not know, then he can make an unbiased decision.

My role and responsibilities can be carried out by trained monkeys. What I bring to the department is the responsibility to carry out those duties. I don't have to be there. A scout is honest - he believes in doing his best to do his duty, to help other people and to obey the scout law.

That boy scout promise I made when I was 12 is going to cost me 80 weeks pay.

0702272200 Cantonese lesson zero

How to speak Cantonese -

1. Say really short syllables
2. Don't finish any consonants
3. Speak fast with tiny pauses in between words

I have to understand that Cantonese and Mandarin are different languages and not variations on "Chinese". They use the same symbols but they have different sounds.

The decision to go to Hong Kong was easy, what language to learn took some thought and planning. I found myself in that conundrem when there is a choice between two things. The two things might be, for example - a piece of cake verses an ice-cream, or "Do I get the blue one or the red one". Eventually I give up deciding on which one and settle on having both. I decide to have cake and ice-cream. The problem of "which one" then becomes the same problem, but now it is "which one first".

I joined an ex-pat forum found that the question of what language to speak was common among the new members. The answers varied 50-50 for Mandarin and Cantonese. They had strong opinions about which language to learn and in true internet style it only took four posts before the informative question and answer session was reduced to three people swapping insults.

Mandarin:

It is the official language of the Peoples Republic of China

It is taught in the schools

It is needed to get a job in China

-----------------

Cantonese:

It is spoken by the merchants, the shop keepers, the taxi drivers and by the people

The people of Hong Kong will laugh at you if you speak Mandarin

It is needed to get a job in Hong Kong

-------------------

I have enrolled to learn Cantonese at the Institute of Modern Languages at the University of Queensland - I start in two weeks so I will get the text books this week.

0702262000 Less than five months.

We had a family home evening about the kids grand parents on their mum's side. The man is a legend. He was knighted, he was in charge of the Queensland butter marketing board and he loved his homeland.

Preparations for Hong Kong. I had to make two copies of my birth certificate for the visa application. Sounds easy enough but I was not in the office today, the usual source of free photocopying, so I went to a newsagent. Mistakes at the newsagent copier can be costly.

Another part of the preparation for the move to Hong Kong is to sell everything in the house. I cleaned up the kitchen and found a few things that can go now. Excess crockery. It would not be practical to advertise every plate on eBay so I thought a dinner set might sell easier. So with some odd plates and cutlery I made up an "eclectic" dinnerware set comprising of six places with cutlery featuring a unique theme for each person.

• 1920


• France


• Minimal


• Fine lines


• Blue curves


• The Junior Space Ranger

I will put an add on eBay for the lot with photos.

Learning Cantonese has been a challenge so far - the few words I learned on Friday have finally sunk in and I can remember them - I can't spell them because it will take away their true meaning if I see them in English or "Lin Mun" - we just dont have the letters. A lot of the sounds end abruptly, for example, the sound of a "k" is made but not fininshed - there is no "aaay" at the end. Apparently the tone is very important - the same sounds are made to say "I don't understand" and "I don't eat". Same words, different tone.

The pirated language course from eBay - The seller has been asking for it back so he can give me a refund. I don't have the time or energy to return it. He left me negative feedback so now my eBay rating is -1. I may be cast out of the eBay community! Oh the shame. :-)

0702251700 - Five Months to go!

Sunday - the day of rest.
I woke up and tried to get that last few minutes of REM sleep that always eludes me. My alarm went off and said that the home teachers were due in 15 minutes. Things to do today - go to church and make a copy of a training session for a kind hearted man that I simply can not refuse. I went to the stake centre to record it from the church satellite system and then copy it to a DVD and insert chapters at the right places. I find this interesting.

We go to Hong Kong in five months. A few times today I have said to the family "...this time in five months we will be on the aeroplane to Hong Kong". The flight takes eight hours so I was saying this all day. In the morning I will bug them with "this time in five months we will have our first day in Hong Kong". For some reason I will find this interesting.

The Cantonese words that I learned on Friday have not sunk in - I can't remember the sounds that I have to make to say "I can't understand" in cantonese. I have nearly learned three sylables and I have 5 months to learn enough Cantonese to run a life, navigate around the city and get a job in the telecommunications industry. At this rate, that is, not quite learning three sylables a day, in five months I may, but not quite, know about 450 sounds that I can use to string a sentence together.
Learning a language is so much more than learning what sounds to make and in what order - the language reveals how the people think. When I was learning Russian I found it interesting that the Russians don't ask "What is your name?", they ask, "How are you called?".

I am tempted to use the language course that I bought off eBay but it is a pirated copy. I feel that I would be dishonest to use it because legally the CD-R of ripped mp3 files is stolen.

I could rationalise and think this way:

• I have paid for a second hand course now and the eBay seller no longer has the licence therefore I can use it.
• I didn't copy it so it is not my fault so therefore I can use it.

The plain legal side of the situation is this:

• I have recieved stolen goods when I thought I was buying used goods.
• It would be wrong to use the stolen copy as I have not paid the artist royalties and commisions.
• I have not entered into a licence agreement with the author.
• The eBay seller does not have the right to distrubution.
• I am entitled to a refund, however the seller is not entitled to the return of stolen property. As a model citizen, I should send the illegal copy to the police as evidence.

I have reported the eBay seller to the company that makes the course and to the managers of eBay. I have my $17.oo of amusement and will not waste any time over it because I also believe that we should not condem too harshly those that sin differently.

0702232210 Other Skills

I have to learn a few new skills.
A week before Christmas one of my bosses three levels up was promoted and as a result I was transfered to a different department. Suddenly I was a 42 year old 'new guy'. Although I have over 15 years experience in this company as a radio design technician, I was treated as a new apprentice. They even showed me where the fire exits are located. The guy that was to become my 'supervisor' was introduced as a "father figure" and everyone in his little section hate him. I have seen the look on their faces when we have meetings - nobody speaks- they have the expressions of beaten dogs. For 5 weeks they all waited for an instruction book on what to do with me. I initiated meetings with my new managers to discuss my role but the meetings were cancelled by them. I asked to be made redundant but they said I was too valuable. We shall see. Suddenly I have to learn a whole new job and frankly, I don't want to. I used to enjoy doing well in my previous job well. "Take it as a new challenge" says the good voice in my head - "show 'em what you can do" it says. I would like that, but I can't find the energy to get inthusiactic about it. Maybe if I didn't also have to do my previous job until they find a replacement.
So as I was saying - I have to take a few vital skills:

• Learn a new career as a telecommunications strategic planner
• Learn a new language in preparation for living in Hong Kong
• Learn how to operate a blog.
• Learn how to remain calm for my family as they undergo this exciting and stressful time

Monday's goal for work - take a long drive and visit my northern sites - drive until lunch time, have lunch, then drive back. Claim a 15 hour day.

0702242200

We will pick this up as we go...

070224 - Saturday.
I signed out a car from work and finally cleaned up that mess under the back verandah. Not very exciting so far.
Last night I applied for a job a Cathay Pacific in Hong Kong as a flight simulator technician - what was thinking?! As long as the thing is still under warranty and all I have to do is call Boeing then I should get away with it.
The move to Hong Kong now has a departure date of 25th July 2007. Every other action depends of this date - leaving my job, finding a home for the cat, painting the house, selling the house, selling my motorbike, selling one car, selling everything that does not fit in one suitcase.
It sounds like a relief to be free of all my worldly goods if only for a few days.