Kyoto 1992.  © PJ Croft 2020

I’m beginning to think it’s time I dropped the Bunker bulldust title. I’m not really bunkering any more as we’re back to normal here in Perth, Western Australia. No virus here.

I had lunch with friends in the Dome restaurant across the road yesterday and I saw no sign of any restrictions on spacing. In fact we were quite crammed in the “Function Room”.

There were several large tables with five or six diners (we were six as well) all trying to talk and I found the noise level pretty difficult. I could only pick up about half what my opposite was saying. I don’t think my hearing is especially defective, it’s just the problem most people have of being able to follow a conversation in a noisy crowd. It’s lucky she just droned on, in long, boring stories such that all I have to do is nod as if I’ve heard her. Many times I had time to think to myself, “What is she talking about?” I lost the thread five minutes ago.

In fact, I was pretty miffed yesterday. I had spoken on the phone the day before with the “Head Girl” about our meeting and since the restaurant is only 100m from my place, I said why don’t we adjourn to my house after the lunch and we can have coffee and talk some more. “No”, she said, “we can do all our talking in the restaurant.” I was pretty offended by that, refusing my invitation, speaking and making the decision for all the others without asking them. As it turned out, as I said the noise level prevented proper conversation and it would have been much easier in my house, but I was effectively prevented from inviting the others because the “Head Girl” had said no.

When it came time to wind up, we were all standing there continuing the conversations. I wanted to say, “Come on over to my place”, but I just gave up and quietly walked away. Fuming. Am I wrong? Am I upset over nothing?

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High up in the North in the land called Svithjod, there stands a rock. It is a hundred miles high and a hundred miles wide. Once every thousand years a little bird comes to this rock to sharpen its beak. When the rock has thus been worn away, then a single day of eternity will have gone by.
—Hendrik Willem Van Loon

This is from a web site called https://what-if.xkcd.com Highly recommended! It’s a very intelligent form of doggerel, answering strange What If questions. I love it.

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Did I say? Broome tourist people are pleading with us to come up there as they need the winter visitors. So what’s to stop me doing the drive now?

I’ve only ever been as far as Exmouth and North West Cape before, in 1987 I think.

North West Cape NP 1987  © PJ Croft 2020

Honda MDX, same colour as mine. For some reason, car sites rubbish the styling. Why? I love it.

I’ve got the Honda MDX which would be quite a nice vehicle for a long drive like that. It’s got two brand new tyres on the front and a new battery. It’s easily configurable for sleeping in the back.

But two things are stopping me – CPAP and a means of powering it, and I don’t have any camping gear. Well, not much.

If I were in a powered camping/caravanning site, then power wouldn’t be a problem, but many of the best places to visit don’t have any power or even toilets. Therefore I might need an extra battery fitted to the Honda, and that would be costly – about $500 including the battery, I’d guess. And I’d have to buy a porta loo.

I guess I could just take one of my small folding tables, and I’ve got a nice folding chair (that will take my weight!). That’s really all I need.

Do I need to battery power my CPAP? Would I really want to rough it out in the unpowered wilds? Probably not. I don’t have the energy that I used to have in 1987. I’ll keep thinking it over………. and the time will slip away and I won’t get anywhere. Ho hum.

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I’m getting a bit annoyed. I ordered a Lenovo laptop computer on behaf of a friend who doesn’t use credit cards, and it’s supposed to be delivered here. I got a confirmation email last week with a tracking number and a delivery date of 29 June, that was Monday.

Nothing came, of course, nor yesterday, and nothing has come today either. I have to sit around here waiting for the doorbell to ring. The web site still shows my delivery as scheduled for Monday two days ago. Grrrrr.

Post Script: stone the flamin’ crows, just ten minutes after I wrote this, there was a rap at the door and when I opened it, there was the delivery box. The guy didn’t wait for a signature, he was already in his van and moving off. OK, well, that’s fixed.

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Speaking of loving car styling:

It’s a Peugeot 407 Wagon, 2007 model. I love it. I want one. It’s only $7,888. But it’s in Sydney and we can’t cross borders. It’s also a diesel and I said I won’t buy a diesel car due to their particulate emissions which are cancerous. I still love that styling, though. They don’t make ’em like that any more.  The look of a car is all important to me. I want to own cars that I like the look of. Luckily they’re all more than 10 years old and affordable.

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Did I mention? After my internet loss last week, and its mysterious return 24hrs later, I found all my wi-fi devices were no longer connected and I couldn’t connect in the normal process. I thought the wi-fi wasn’t working.

Late yesterday afternoon, I decided to tackle the problem and went into the modem Toolbox with all its settings and diagnostics.

To cut a long story short, after much fiddling I found that my wi-fi password had changed. It was previously an easy one for me to remember but it stopped working after the iiNet support guy got me to do a hard reset of the modem. But luckily the password that works now is one I had stored in my password program. It was just luck and guesswork that made me try it. Why did it change? Harrrrumph!

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OK, next job – setting up the new laptop for Keith. He wants to use the dictation (voice recognition) feature for word processing, a feature of Windows 10. I know it works for MS Word, but he doesn’t want to have to pay for the whole suite when he only uses one part of it. OK, I’ve installed the free Libre Office, but at the moment it doesn’t want to cooperate. It doesn’t seem to accept voice dictation. Bugger. I don’t know what to do about that.

Then it’s back to installing the new AV/Radio into Vera, the Verada. Never bored.