I’m still loving this car and feeling grateful that it was such an easy purchase. The owner was Filipino, a permanent resident working as a mechanic on big trucks, and he was a nice guy. His given name was Magno, and he said many people call him Mango. Considering he has a very healthy mango tree with hanging fruit in his front lawn, it’s appropriate.

Without any haggling he dropped his asking price considerably. I hope it isn’t because of a guilty conscience, but I haven’t found any hidden defects yet.

For all its good points, I’m finding a few minus points:

• There’s no trip computer of any kind. This was 1995, so too early for that. There’s just a single mechanical trip meter.
• The ride is pretty stiff and bumpy. If I have the money sometime, I’m sure a set of adjustable shocks would smooth it out.
• The brakes need a very hard push and don’t feel all that effective even then. They feel lumpy too. I think the discs need skimming. Shouldn’t cost too much, I hope.
• The radio space is vertically offset from the binnacle below it, so it’s single DIN height only. I have a lovely Pioneer AV unit but it’s double DIN height. I can’t see any way I could fit it.
• It’s hard for me to get in, but I’m learning to slide in. Getting out is much harder. I have to lift myself with my right thigh muscles while holding myself up on the door pillar. Yow, it hurts, but I’ll get used to it, and my leg muscles should develop. The doors are very wide too so I look for parking spaces with lots of room.

Apart from that, not much to complain about! I love it!

___________________________________

By the way, in case you don’t know the terms single DIN and double DIN, it stands for Deutsche Industrie Norm, the German Industry Standard. Years ago the Germans developed these standard widths and heights for car radios and AV devices and luckily the Japanese came on board so that it’s all standard. Any radio usually fits any car.

However, for some reason many car makers, Honda being one, put radios in some models which are totally non-standard and would never be able to be swapped out for another brand. I’ve been looking at Honda Oddysseys:

Look how the controls are part of the dash. Notice that the CD slot is down near the floor! How could you substitute a new AV LCD display unit in there? You can’t. Still, the inbuilt unit is quite comprehensive.

I’ve been looking at this model for some months. They go for about $5,000 and are bloody luxurious. Leather and woodgrain, and room enough to sleep in the back. After I’ve got rid of the MDX and the Verada, I might buy one for touring and then that will do me. I only want the 2005 model. To me, it looks the best and has the leather and woodgrain. Later years dropped the leather for velour and changed the dash considerably. Nope, 2005 for me.

_________________________________________

I’ve had a partially blocked right ear for several months and despite a good hard wash out at the doctor’s surgery, removing a good buildup of wax, it didn’t improve as much as I’d hoped. He says my Eustachian tube is partially blocked and recommends blowing up a balloon to clear it. It’s just like after a plane flight where your ear won’t clear. It’s kinda worked too, with pops and squeaks, but I still get changes in my hearing in that ear with changes in my head angle.

He also said anti-histamines will help, so I needed no more encouragement to go back to Phenergan. I used that before when I had the insomnia problem. It really works in getting me to sleep and keeping me asleep, but gee, it slows me down in the morning. Only from about midday onwards do I start to feel awake with a bit of energy. Yes, I know, take the Phenergan earlier in the evening, but I want to be awake to watch my TV and I forget to take it.

It’s also psychologically addictive. I tend to think, no, I better not use it, but come bed time it’s too tempting. Hmmm.

__________________________________

It was interesting on TV last night: on a program about alternative therapies, the Sydney surgeon Dr Charlie Teo said that Asian and Chinese people don’t have the genes for ear wax and underarm sweat glands. They don’t sweat in their arm pits. How about that? I didn’t know. He used himself as an example as he’s Asian.

____________________________

I’m up to 5,783 words in my TVW history and I’m still only up to the late 80s. I’ve only just started the Americas Cup period 1986/87. Boy, that was a tough time for me. Stress city. Torn between being a tech fixing faults and having to be in Master Control with one ear always on the talkback listening for “TVW, this is ATN, what have you got for us?”

I don’t know what to do about this submission. If I say it myself, I write damned well and I simply will not compress 33 years down to four pages and four photos. It’s ridiculous.

As well, I’m a pedant and a stickler for spelling, grammar, syntax and punctuation and I will not allow anyone to edit my work. Most of the writing I see on the web is juvenile, ungrammatical, misspelt atrocious rubbish. People don’t care about their writing. I’m not letting anyone change my submission.

So I suspect I may have to decline being in this TVW History book and publish my own PDF book, available for download if anyone wants it. It’s likely to be at least 50 pages and fifty photos. We’ll see. The deadline isn’t until December, so there’s plenty of time to sort this out.

Meanwhile I made a comment on the F/B page yesterday and the administrator seems to have blocked it. I’m annoyed. We’re not going to get along, I think.

__________________________________________

My Wish orders have just arrived for today and one of the items is a 100ml bottle of CBD Oil, that’s CBD as in cannabidiol oil. I wondered if it would get through customs and it has. There should be another bottle coming. It’s either free or about $5 so even if they confiscated it, too bad, no loss.

I didn’t have any particular plan for it, but boy, my feet hurt from diabetic neuropathy. Non-stop burning, aching, with stabbing pains at times, enough to have me crying out with the pain. The stabbings only last seconds, but they still bloody hurt. It’s slowly getting worse.

So we’ll see how we go, whether it works. I have no expectations. If it works by placebo effect, all to the good.