Aaah, nice warm weather, 27C today, lovely. It still gets a bit cool at night and I might start out on top of the bed sheets, but I wake up under the doona.

Last week I emailed the local office of A. H. Beard, the mattress makers, telling them once again how dissatisfied I am with the mattress I bought. No reply. I filled out their on-line survey, giving them very low marks. No response. I emailed their Sydney office. Again, no reply. They’re just ignoring me.

A. H. Beard. This is the worst mattress I’ve ever slept on, and being a traveller, I’ve slept on an awful lot of mattresses apart from my own – in hotels, I mean. Yet the best I’ve ever slept on was in a Bali hotel in 2016, in other words a mattress made in Indonesia, or even Bali. It was remarkable for its comfort, so much that my partner and I both commented on it. If only I could have that one. Mattress, I mean. I’m afraid my partner has departed. A great pity.

I think I’ll just have to sell this mattress, take a big loss and buy another one. Meanwhile, don’t buy an AH Beard mattress!

________________________________________________

The title refers to the referendum on Saturday. Voting is compulsory, by the way, how about that my USA friends? All it means is that attendance at a polling station and being crossed off the roll is compulsory. Once you’ve got your ballot paper, you can leave it blank or deface it, no-one will know.

Anyway, the referendum is to add a section to the Constitution to recognise Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders as original inhabitants of Australia (a proven fact) and to set up a committee (called a Voice) to advise the federal parliament on matters affecting Indigenous people. Nothing more.

The wording: The vote will decide whether we recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in our Constitution, and whether we consult with First Nations people on matters that affect them, through a Voice to Parliament. That’s it.

The Voice (committee) advice would not be compulsory and any advice would still be voted on by the parliament. If they decided it was unacceptable, then it wouldn’t pass. That’s all.

But the dirty racist NO campaigners have built up a mass of lies about this, saying it would divide the country along race lines and that it would amount to apartheid. What evil bastards No voters will be.

The slow learners believe these lies. Too many people say, “Oh, I don’t understand it, so I’ll just vote NO.” Cretins. Slow learners. Brain deficient. But above all, LAZY. Can’t be bothered making any effort to find out and understand.

I’m afraid the NO campaign is going to prevail on Saturday. For months, they’ve been spreading lies, fear, misleading claims and race hatred. I find this very depressing. It’s typical of this country – full of low intelligence, timid people with a fear of change. The contrast with the USA, the UK, Japan, Germany, France is glaring. Those countries are leaders in breaking ground, getting things done. Australia will always be laggards, too afraid to take to the front. Not everyone, obviously, but there are too few doers and too many naysayers.

It wasn’t always that way, but things have changed since early last century. There are a valiant few, fighting against the odds, trying to make breakthroughs, but they can’t overcome the great slothfull mass of dullards. Yes, if you vote No, I’m calling you a dullard, a no-hoper.

________________________________________

The NBN (National Broadband Network) is a prime example. This was proposed by Labor (the progressive party in Australia) nearly 20 years ago as a nationwide fibre optic network, to carry data at 1 Gigabits per second (Gb/s) or more. It was visionary and exciting. We knew that new ideas would grow from it.

But what happened? A new Liberal-National Party government was elected and they just had to oppose it. A new minister for communications was in office (Malcolm Turnbull) and he just had to make big changes, purely to have a point of difference to Labor, who had proposed the system. It’s a long story but we ended up having a dog’s breakfast of a hybrid system, incapable of the 1Gb/s and ranking around 17th in the world internet speed rankings. Using old copper wiring instead of the glass fibre. Costing just as much as the original system would have, even more.

So I call Malcolm Turnbull the man who single handedly wrecked Australia’s fibre optic network. The wrecker.

_____________________________________

I’ve just been on the phone to Epson Customer Support (and I nearly started swearing at the guy, thinking it was a scam call – luckily I stopped before uttering any nasty words).

I gave them very low marks last week because I just could not navigate and use their on-line purchase page on their web site. No matter what I did, it kept sending me around in a circle between two pages. Although I kept pressing the Go to Checkout button, it took me back to asking for more details, every time. Their solution, use a different browser. I didn’t have a different browser (I use Mozilla Firefox), and by the time I was able to use Chrome, someone else had jumped in and bought the item. Grrrr!

Anyway, he asked me a few questions whether I had any other problems and I said YES! Glad you asked. My Epson ET-7700 multi-function printer scanner misses lines and colours, and leaves black ink splotches on the page, every time! Very unhappy about it. It means I can’t make any colour prints – photos, I mean. This is a $750 printer! Unfortunately I didn’t make any warranty noises in the first year because I didn’t realise how big a problem it was going to be.

Anyway, I was able to say that I’ve done all the right things, all the cleaning, replaced the Maintenance Box, done the head alignment and so on. So he’s given me the name of the service agent in Perth. We didn’t talk about warranty so it’ll be interesting to see what happens.

_________________________________________

Anyway, the item I was going to buy from Epson at $599, down from $799, is this:

It’s the Fast Foto FF-680W scanner. What’s so good about it?

The idea is that we’ve all got boxes and packets of old photographic prints from the days of the 1-hour photo processing shop. They sit in our cupboards and drawers and we hardly ever look at them. As well, we have masses of documents of various kinds, bills, memos, letters, single photos up to A4 size and so on.

With this machine, you load them into the feeder as shown above, in any order, and press the Start button. It feeds them through, one by one, and scans them in high resolution at a rate of one per second! That means 60 photos or documents per minute! High 2400 dpi resolution or higher.

While it’s doing this, it automatically straightens them, colour corrects them, sharpens them, and puts them into a folder that you nominate.

I missed the $599 carton-damaged machine on Epson’s web site, but yesterday I saw it advertised on Amazon Prime Day for $649 so that was it – I had to buy. It will arrive on 25 October.

I don’t have all that many prints, since I nearly always shot slides, but I do have several dozen packets of prints and a hundred or more black and white prints of various sizes. That looks like being about an hour’s work! Then what?

I have the idea of offering a scanning service. But I would need people to (a) bring their material to me; (b) accept that I would have no idea of the information in the photos; and (c) collect the results. I would put the results onto a thumb drive. The cost would be some fee depending on the time required, plus the cost of the thumb drive.

But I may be too optomistic. People are notoriously reluctant to pay anything for a service. Maybe I’m too cynical. We’ll see.

Crumbs, from winter cold to summer heat in a week. It was 32C yesterday and it feels similar today. I need to open the window in this room as it’s very stuffy, but reaching the latch behind my monitor is hard. I can do it, just … in a while. (Later – done it.)

I’ve just had a cup of instant coffee, using the winner, number 1 in CHOICE’s latest test of instant coffee. Surprisingly, it’s Bushells powdered coffee in a big tin, 200g for $8.50.

But frankly, I don’t know how they could have chosen this. To me, it’s bland, boring, tasting just like the powdered “caterers’ blend” we used to be served at work. Sweepings off the factory floor. I don’t like it. They say if you like a richer coffee (which I definitely do), use two teaspoons. Well, I’ve used two, and in this cup I used three heaped teaspoons, but I still don’t like it. Fail. Wasted my money, I reckon.

___________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________

I haven’t got every one, but I’ve had at least one of every type over the years and I’ve probably still got a dozen or more of these. More. I’ve even got a few specialised electronics types that are not included in the photo, fine side cutters and finer needle nose pliers. Right angle needle nose. I’ve got a lotta tools! The last one, bottom right, is an oil filter wrench and I wouldn’t have included it in the list, but what the hell…

I had to buy yet another tool yesterday, a tap valve face reseating tool. I’ve had a leaking tap in the bathroom for some time and I was sure I had one of these tools. But the weeks slid by and I couldn’t find it.

Then last week, when the dishwasher guy was here, he had to turn the water off, so I asked to borrow his refacing tool. I used it and ground a bit away, but I couldn’t test it because I couldn’t turn the water on while he was working.

Well, finally, when the water went back on, it was still leaking, but he was finishing and going and I couldn’t redo the job. Hence yesterday I gave in and bought myself a new refacing tool. $15.70. It’ll last me a lifetime, but how many more years do I have? It hardly matters how long it’ll last, I’ll probably never have to use it again. What a waste.

__________________________________________________

Oh, it’s so good to have a dishwasher again. Six months I’ve been without it. It’s so convenient to use some crockery or cutlery or a pan, and just throw it into the dishwasher immediately. Bliss. It allows me to really use all my stuff, instead of trying to minimise.

__________________________________________________

I also bought series 2 and 3 of Succession, that HBO TV series I mentioned last week. Kerrumbs! I’d been hearing and reading about this series for a couple of years and didn’t think I wanted to get involved very much.

But WHAM! It is so good! So complex, so well scripted, so involving. The actors are so good. Especially Shiv (short for Shivonne). She’s the smiling assassin, the velvet fist, the scheming bitch, always planning to turn the family situation to suit her. Playing double games, in one case with a lover against her husband, in another case in a plot against her brothers to get control of the family company, and in another, a plot to join forces with a US senator and presidential candidate who is a sworn enemy of her father. She’s a hydra headed smiling Gorgon.

There are 12 episodes in each boxed set. You can pay to watch on-line, without buying the discs, but each episode is $2.99, so 12 episodes cost $36 approx. The boxed sets cost me $16 each, half that price, and I get to keep them.

By the way, “boxed sets”, not “box sets”. Lazy people say box set. Not me. The same way I say ass-fault (asphalt), not ashfelt; and licoriss (licorice), not lick-rish. How do you get lickrish from licorice? (Yeah, by licking it, ha ha ha)

_________________________________________

One week to go to the referendum and I’m ramping up my efforts persuade people to vote YES.

The Indigenous population have extended the hand of friendship to us, the people who stole their land, waged war against them, murdered them, imprisoned them, spread diseases to them, and ignored their pleas for a Voice in the things that affect them.

The people who are going to vote Yes are the best educated, the brightest, the leaders, the medical fraternity, the health clinics, the biggest and best of business and industry, the people who care.

If you’re planning to vote No, you’ll be slapping the hand away. You’ll be in the group of ultra right wingers, dullards, racists, Neo Nazis, slow learners, spreaders of false and misleading stories …

If you’re of the Liberal persuasion and feel it’s too Labour, there are plenty of Liberal leaders who are advocating Yes. It’s not a political question. You don’t need to feel you’d be too far left/liberal (small l).

_______________________________________

My current book is the Sony Story by Akio Morita, the main guy who started Sony. Although he wasn’t the only top dog in the startup company, it’s just that he’s written the book.

I can’t disguise my admiration for well run companies making top quality products. Most of the Japanese companies are brilliant case studies of how to run a company. The immaculate precision of Sony electronics (and mechanicals) is just a sight to behold. They’re not the only ones – similar companies are Toshiba, Hitachi, Mitsubishi and so on, well known names. But a company you’ve probably never heard of is Anritsu. They make admirably good electronic test equipment. Anyone who works in high end electronics will speak highly about Anritsu.

When Australia was trying to choose a supplier of submarines, Japan tried very hard to get into the race. They weren’t happy to be excluded. In my opinion, if we had chosen the Japanese design, we would have had our subs by now, they would have been incredibly well built and they would have been incredibly reliable. So reliable that we could have had 11 out of 12 at sea at any one time, with only one being in dry dock for maintenance instead of three or four being unavailable. Assuming that we ever get any subs! What a debacle! Every defence acquisition we attempt goes wrong. Utter incompetence in Defence.

Etymology Online: cheap skate, “miserly person,” 1896, from cheap (adj.), second element perhaps from American English slang skate “worn-out horse”

I’ve bought myself some new secondhand hi-fi. But cheap!

From the top:

• Technics tuner amplifier ST-X902L, probably worthless, I’ll clean it up and give it away free to someone. Lightweight. If I can’t fix it, I’ll just junk it.
• Technics AM/FM tuner. Reasonable quality.
• Technics RS-X502 Double casstte recorder + player, Dolby B, C, HX Pro (headroom extension).
• Technics SL-PJ38 CD player.
• Technics SU-X502 multi channel amplifier with digital/optical inputs.
• Sony STR-DH730 7.1 channel 85W/channel tuner amplifier.
• TEAC AG-D9260 7.1 channel tuner amplifier (gold one at bottom).

$7 each! Of course, that’s the good news. The bad news is that “some are working, some are not”. I don’t know any more than that at the moment, I haven’t tried them yet. I like fixing things, and even if they are duds, at $7 each I’m not worried.

So they join my other hi-fi stacks:

Am I crazy or what? 🙂 🙂

___________________________________________

I love Minidisc. I’ve written about it here before. I own four Minidisc decks and about 100 discs since the early 1990s.

The thing about the discs is that they never wear out. They are virtually indestructible. They’re enclosed in a caddy with a sliding cover and they need both a laser and a magnetic field to record – i.e. they are magneto-optical discs. So even though I bought all those many discs back in the early 1990s, they’ll last me forever. I can erase and reuse them over and over.

One of my Minidisc decks is incorporated in a Sharp AM/FM + CD amplifier, and the great benefit of it is that I can have a disc loaded in the transport semi-permanently, and if I hear anything on the radio that interests me and I want to keep, I can just hit Record and it instantly starts recording. It just starts at the next available space on the disc. I don’t have to fiddle around finding a blank section, just bang and it’s recording. Then when it’s finished, I can edit it, name it, add it to a list, whatever. You can’t do that with tape.

However, both this Sharp and the Sony Hi-fi deck in the gold stack above have gone faulty – they won’t eject. I’m almost certain they have broken rubber drive belts.

You can buy a bag of assorted drive belts from Jaycar, 25 belts for $23.95 (robbery!) But that’s the Sony hi-fi deck above – a work of art. Beautifully made.

Bored? What me? Never.

_________________________________________________

Finally, finally! I have my replacement Miele dishwasher. This is the insurance claim after the ceiling collapse in March. It’s only taken six months!

________________________________________________

Wow, I’ve been hearing about the TV series Succession for the past year, and blow me down, I realised that I have the 10-episode three disc set of series 1 DVDs that I bought about three years ago. I’d forgotten I had them tucked away in a pile.

Anyway, I’m well and truly hooked. I’ve watched the first five episodes so far and it’s very good. It’s about a very (obscenely) wealthy and powerful New York family that has an uncanny resemblance to the Murdochs, and all their nasty power struggles. The reviews all mention the foul language and that’s for sure. They’re not only obscenely wealthy, they are obscene, full stop.

One of the main characters is having dinner at a hideously expensive NY restaurant and he makes the remark that when you are as rich as they are, you just don’t have to think about what anything costs. There are no prices on the menu, not even for the wines. Whatever it costs, however grossly expensive it is, you just order it or buy it. You don’t need to hesitate because you are rich.

This particular dish they order is a deep fried bird. That is, it’s a small deep fried song bird that you eat, head, feathers, feet, wings, bones, the lot, in one big bite. But not before you place a white cloth over your head first so that you don’t see it. Gross! And as I said, obscene.

I recommend it. The TV series, I mean, not the bird.

Some of the reviews are calling it the best TV series ever. Bulldust! Rubbish. Typical American exaggeration. I could name you at least a dozen better series, including made in Australia ABC series. Americans don’t know how to make great TV.

________________________________________

Bloody ‘ell, the rain and wind have set in. What crazy weather. We had the September record maximum on Thursday, 34.4deg, and now it’s down to 20C, and 18C tomorrow. Weird.

It’s been a while, sorry. I’m sleeping poorly, so I feel tired most of the time. Restless leg syndrome! Diabetic foot pain! And a rotten mattress doesn’t help. Makers – AH Beard. Crap mattress! I don’t think they know how to make mattresses.

Recently I had a phone call and visit from a woman representing a Home Care type of company. She was pushing motorised bed/mattresses, the kind that elevates your feet above the heart, and so on. And vibrates. All well and good, but they want $6,000 to $7,000! That’s crazy. I said I need to think about it, and she said she’d phone me in a couple of days, but of course she didn’t, and that’s good. In the meantime, I did a bit of shopping around and found you can get them for $2,000 – $4,000. Huh. I’m still not sure I want to spend that much. CHOICE tests mattresses and they recommend one for about $450 which they say ticks all the boxes. Maybe I should try that.

________________________________________

The referendum is only 21 days away and although I’m a firm YES voter, I fear it’s going to fail.

For my overseas readers, we are holding a referendum to alter the constitution (actually, to insert a new clause), to give the Indigenous (First Nations/Aborigines/Torres Strait Islanders) people a “Voice”.

Unfortunately the government have not explained this Voice very well. What’s a Voice? It’s an abstract term to me. I’ve never had any trouble understanding it, but many, many people don’t get it. Only now, with three weeks to go, are the governemt starting to say it will be a committee, which I think they should have been saying for the past six months.

Unfortunately there is a big No Vote push, with the slogan, “If you don’t know, vote No” and that’s what a lot of people are saying.

As well, there’s a strong racist stream too. This is a very racist country, I’m afraid. There’s an undercurrent of hatred toward Aborigines, and these nasty No people are spreading lies and misinformation. It’s working.

To succeed, the referendum has to be passed by a majority of the population (about 17 million eligible voters, i.e. over 18, out of a total population of 27.5 million), AND a majority of the states. There are six states, so that means four have to vote Yes to make a majority. Three is not enough. That also means that it only takes three states to vote No to kill the referendum.

Queensland, being ultra-conservative and racist, will vote No for sure. Victoria will vote Yes, and probably NSW too. Labor in WA has always advocated a Yes vote, of course. And a few months ago, the WA Liberal Party said they would advocate a Yes vote too. But a couple of months ago, they changed their minds!! Typical bloody Liberals. They’re advocating a No vote now. So does the National Party in WA, the farmers’ party.

Unfortunately, therefore, I think WA will vote No. So that’s it folks. It’s good night from us and bye bye referendum. South Australia is hard to pick. They have nearly always been quite progressive, but it’s a knife edge there. I think Tasmania will vote Yes, but it’s very hard to judge.

All in all, I’m not optimistic. There are too many Indigenous spokesmen and women speaking against the proposal.

I find this very depressing. This country has repeatedly tried to make changes to the constitution, and they nearly always fail. Nearly always! Australian people are very, very hard to be persuaded, no mater how good the arguments. I do not find this to be an admirable trait.

_____________________________________

Australia? None. Zero. No car makers. No innovation. No flair. Pathetic!

__________________________________

I’m making good progress on the family tree. I have 995 relatives going back to about 1350 so far. I hit a wall about then, which is not surprising. I’m concentrating mostly on the Croft side, less so on the Arnold (Mum’s) side, although that side is very interesting too. I might spend more time on that side.

________________________________________

Aaahh, sun’s out, warm afternoon. Here we are, six days into spring and we’ve had a lot of rain and wind, too much for me. It’s still only 19degC max. today but I hope it warms up from now on.

________________________________________

Actually, the white lights, the headlights, are coming towards us on the left of the highway, so it can’t be the USA. I don’t know where it is.

I’ve been watching a lot of YouTube content showing the USA lately and the thing that whacks me in the eye is the density of the houses, highways, freeways, industries. With a population of 350million people, that makes them 13 times our density, and it shows. Although I find a lot to admire about the US (inventing, designing, building aircraft for example), and I like looking, I would never want to live there. Too dangerous. Too violent. Too ready to resort to guns to solve problems. They are the most war-like people on the planet in my opinion.

Yet we need to ally ourselves with them in the face of China’s agression. We have to do it. There’s no way we can deter China alone.

I seriously think there is going to be a war with China within a decade, and it will be enormously destructive and deadly. Possibly millions will die. Thank goodness I can sit on the sidelines.

__________________________________________________

I’m listening to the car section on ABC radio at the moment and a listener has asked what electric vehicle she should buy.

But I wouldn’t buy an EV if you paid me to do it. The battery in EVs has a life of about ten years, maybe 15, and when it won’t take a charge any more, it’s far too expensive to replace it. It would cost you about the same as a new car just for the new battery alone. That means your car becomes obsolete, unrepairable.

ICE cars (Internal Combustion Engine) can be almost endlessly repaired, provided parts can be obtained. Notice I don’t say “are available”. Eventually manufactirers’ spares stocks run out, but spares always seem to be obtainable from wreckers, people who don’t want their old car any more, squirrelled away stocks and so on. There are companies that specialise in spares for certain makes.

But I doubt there will be cheap reconditioned EV vehicle batteries. For one thing, thechnology is moving along and it could well be that the batteries will be entirely different in 15-20 years’ time.

So I do not see myself buying an EV in my lifetime. Except…….

I’ve never liked Rolls Royces. Too olde worlde for my liking, too square, too woody, too ridiculously garish looking. No thanks.

But I’ve changed my mind. Rolls Royce La Rose Noire coupe.

This one was built to a client’s specifications, to order. Price? 32. That’s $32. Million! USD. A$50 million!

No, I won’t be forking out this week, but this is the first time I’ve lusted after a Rolls.

The other point is, perfection! I’ve often thought, once you reach a certain point of perfection in cars, appliances, electronic devices, how do you exceed it? To me, Japanese cars like Toyotas, Hondas, Mazdas are so good that it’s hard to imagine anything more perfect. I think this exceeds them, but so it should.

___________________________________________

I think this deserves an award for humour. On the radio a few mornings ago, the announcer was talking about whether Shakespeare should be modernised. As an example, he said, “What about To Be or Not To Be, in Bogan Yeah, Nah?”

L.O.L. !! I laughed out loud. Good one. Gold star to that man.

Yep, that’s my heart. Last Tuesday I had an angiogram at Hollywood Private Hospital. Unfortunately they wanted me there at 7.30am, so I ordered an Uber taxi for 5.30am, knowing that there’s a massive amount of road works on the freeway.

But I realised after ordering the ride that I’d probably allowed too much time. Then the hospital changed the arrival time to 7.45am. I tried to change the Uber time but couldn’t find a way to do it. OK, no problem, it just meant I was very early – we got there at about 6.20am. No problem, I don’t mind waiting.

In the end I wasn’t wheeled into the refrigerated! operating theatre until 10am. All went smoothly and as you can see, he didn’t find anything remarkable, although there is one narrowed bit apparently. I have to see the cardiologist in six weeks, so I’ll find out more then.

But the GP asked me yesterday whether I feel any different, having had the angiogram, and the answer is no. I’m still very tired, wanting to sleep a lot. So what else could it be? I’m worried about a suspected kidney stone, but blood tests don’t show any inflammation, so it doesn’t seem to be an infection.

One bit of good news is that the Ozempic (semaglutide) appetite suppressant drug is working wonders. I’ve lost about 5kg in four months and as a result, not only are my blood sugar readings coming back into the “normal” range of 4-8mmol/ml, my HbA1c is now 6.5. That’s remarkable! That figure of less than 7.0 is regarded as meaning, technically, I’m not diabetic. Amazing. The tests also showed that my liver has improved, i.e. less fat, and my kidneys are fine. It’s all good news.

I also found an article in The Guardian yesterday that says studies are showing that semaglutide is having big benefits on the heart. Like, repairing damage. Fantastic.

The only drawback to using Ozempic is that you feel a bit nauseous, but I can tolerate that. So, shazzam! Good news.

_________________________________________

The Uber taxi cost me $63 each way, by the way, and took 42 mins.

_________________________________________

I am so frustrated by the delays in getting my replacement dishwasher! The insurance company has OK the order, and originally placed it with Betta Electrical in Rockingham, but they couldn’t get stock. I waited more than three months but then persuaded NRMA Insurance ot switch the order to Appliances Online. They promise quick delivery, but also to take the old one away and install the new one.

But week after week goes by with no call. A couple of weeks ago I couldn’t even get AppOnline to even answer their phones. I finally got through last Thursday 17th, and they said I would get a call.

But another whole week has gone by with nothing, no call. This has dragged on for nearly five months now. I’m getting tired of washing dishes by hand.

Ho hum, first world problem, I know.

August, the coldest, most unpleasant month of the year, in my opinion. Thank goodness it’s nearly over. It hasn’t been all that wet, but it’s been too cold for my liking. Of course, compared to northern hemisphere winters, as I’ve remarked before, it’s nothing. I’ve been watching the TV series Alone, plus a few Youtube clips recently about Canadians battling through blizzards and snowbanks. I could not bear it! I don’t understand why people choose to live in such cold. Why? Why?!

Anyway, although my fingers get a bit cold and stiff at times, it’s fine. My house is well insulated and only goes as low as an inside temperature of 16-17degC, at which point I turn on the reverse cycle air conditioning for great wafts of warm air. Lovely.

___________________________________________

I must admit to feeling very poorly in the past few weeks. Weak and tired. I’ve been getting a bit of angina and puffs of breathlessness. I saw the cardiologist last week and he wants to do an angiogram (I call it an angrygram 🙂 ), so that’s going to happen on Tuesday 22nd, Tuesday week. I don’t like these procedures (probe up through an arm vein into the heart!), but last time he did one on 26 January 2021, he found a 90% blocked vein. Lucky! So it needs to be done.

But he wants me at Hollywood Private Hospital at 7.30am! Holy mackerel, it’s an hour’s drive even without any traffic problems and traffic at that time of the day will be awful. I’ve booked an Uber driver for 5.30am. I’m assuming that will be sufficient time. It’s going to cost $73 one way. Ouch.

________________________________________

I’m reading an article about whether the USA should go to war to defend Taiwan if China decides to invade, and it includes this paragraph:

“The past half-century is littered with conflicts the United States chose to wage without weighing the cost of fighting versus the cost of not engaging. A list of such conflicts includes the Vietnam War, Operation Iraqi Freedom, the 20-year fiasco in Afghanistan, the 2011 attack on Libya, the 2014 excursion into Syria, the support of Saudi Arabia in its war with Yemen, and a perpetual military engagement on the African continent. 

“None of these conflicts was forced on Washington. All were chosen, and the cost to the United States has been astronomical. Benefits have been paltry, or, as I argue, entirely absent.” (1945)

Exactly. All these wars have been unnecessary and disastrous, and Australia has been involved in the first three (Viet Nam, Iraq and Afghanistan) without any parliamentary debate or popular discussion. All have been initiated by Liberal Party governments and usually by the prime minister alone, without even involving his ministers!! Amazing and egregiously bad.

They have cost hundreds of Australian soldiers’ lives and billions of dollars, for no benefit whatever! They have achieved nothing! My blood boils, as you can tell.

So what if China tries to take Taiwan by force? The big factor is that Taiwan houses TSMC, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s biggest semiconductor (integrated circuit) manufacturing plant. They make up to 90% of the world’s “chips” and naturally, this is HUGELY important to the world. If China gained control of this plant, assuming it survived a war intact, they would have us by the throat. They could dictate the supply of semiconductors to the world and throttle our industries.

The USA are working frantically to (re)build their own IC production facilities, which they foolishly allowed to wither and move overseas (to Taiwan, mainly, but also to Korea and China), but it takes years to build an IC fabrication factory. Luckily Holland are the makers of these giant “machines” and obviously they would supply any Western country that could afford the huge cost.

The workings of these are a fascinating story, too much for this blog, but the gist is that they etch lines on the silicon base disc which are as narrow as 4nm – that’s 4 nano metres. That’s far smaller than a human hair and so tiny that the slightest vibration would ruin the etch. It’s done using X-ray lasers which are so precise as to be at the limit of mechanics and physics. They are a triumph of engineering. You’ll pay a couple of $billion for one of these. And wait years for delivery.

Anyway, what should Australia do if China invades Taiwan? In my opinion, this would be one case where we should intervene in any way we can, because our interests are very much at stake. We cannot allow China to (a) use force to subjugate the Taiwanese; and (b) gain complete control of most of the world’s semiconductor manufacturing facilities. The article I read suggests that loss of control would cause a worldwide recession of at least 10%, amounting to a depression, with widespread hardship.

Unfortunately, a war with China would be very, very costly. It would be a fight to the death, literally. I think it would almost certainly involve nuclear weapons very early in any conflict. China would put their prestige on the line. They would take the attitude that they must not lose, so they would use any means to win, including nuclear wepons. This is very, very bad and I am in fear it will happen.

_______________________________________

I’ve been watching a lot of Youtube lately, and one thing in particular. That’s a US company called Copart, which takes cars that have been damaged, either by accidents or water damaged by flooding. They take cars that insurance companies have written off and sell to anyone who’ll buy, so as to recoup some of their cost of paying out the claimants.

The thing is, there are thousands upon thousands of cars in giant yards, all damaged to some degree, often far too much to repair, but some are not too bad. The Youtube guys scour these yards for bargains and when they find cars they think can be resurrected, they put in low bids in an on-line auction. Often, they win.

I’m talking $50,000 – $150,000 cars being sold for $5,000 or even less. Two guys in particular are Porsche fanatics. They’ve got a Porsche Boxster for $2,500 and got it going for the cost of a new oil pan, costing $600. Plus fitting, oil change and cleaning and detailing. Amazing.

I can’t get over the number and range of all these damaged cars in the Copart lots. There are the usual boring small cars, but the number of Ferraris, Porsches, Audis, Bentleys, Rolls Royces, Aston Martins and so on is amazing. If only, if only …….

_______________________________________

It’s dawn and the sun has come up. I awoke about 4am and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I’m at the PC as usual. The birds are chirping. Lovely. Cheers.

I’m working frantically on my Croft History Volume 3 photobook. I have two prepaid vouchers that I bought seven months ago and they expire on the 17th. As usual, I’ve been procrastinating, but I’m more than half way finished. It will only take a few more hours’ work and then I can send them off for printing.

Beeeyoootiful day. Cloudless blue sky, no wind, 22degC, very tolerable.

The title is meant as a riff on “milestones” – another of my high school mates died last week, Bob Farmer. It’s his funeral today. I didn’t know he’d been ill as I haven’t seen him for ten years, but I’m told he was lately having to carry an oxygen cylinder around with him. He was a heavy smoker, so I would guess COPD. I’m so glad I gave up in 1988.

The fact is that I’m feeling unwell too. Not lung problems, but I think I have a developing kidney stone. It’s not the full ‘nuclear explosion’ of pain, just a dull ache on the left side, slowly getting worse, and a general weakness and tiredness. I’ve finally managed to get an appointment with a urologist but, as usual, it’s not for another month, mid September. I may end up in the emergency department before then.

__________________________________________________

_______________________________________________

I had to call an ambulance on Saturday, as well. It wasn’t a severe emergency, but as I was coming through the back door with three bags of groceries plus my general ‘handbag’, I lost my balance as I stepped over the sliding door track and fell forward. Luckily I fell into a pile of cardboard boxes which cushioned my fall.

That was the easy part. The hard part was that I couldn’t get up! My body was twisted aound. I could reach the sliding door handle, but I don’t have the strength to pull myself up.

I tried various things for about 45 mins but no luck. I could reach my phone in my bag, luckily, and I phoned a mate to see if he could come and give me a hand, but he was too far away.

So there was nothing for it but to call an ambulance. I felt bad about it, but when I explained what had happened, they were very understanding and it arrived about 20 mins later. Unfortunately, they couldn’t get their stretcher past my car and through the narrow back door. Nor could they lift me.

I realised that if I slid myself across the tiled floor into the bathroom, and the ambo guy put my thick bathmats down for me to kneel on, I could twist myself around, get my arms up onto the edge of the bath, brace my legs against the cabinets behind and with a mighty push, I got myself up. Bloody ‘ell, I was shaking with the stress and strain, but I was up. Good thing to remember in case it happens again.

Being paramedics, they wanted to do all their tests, so I had an ecg (perfect), blood sugar (4.9, great), blood pressure (155/75 fine), so all good. They wanted to take me in to Joondalup hospital, but I said no, I was fine, so they got me to sign a waiver of liability and they were on their way. It was an easy one for them.

So that was a fun couple of hours, but this is a bit of a worry. I suppose things are a bit unusual in that I’m feeling unwell, weak and wobbly, so a fall like this is out of the ordinary. But it raises the question of whether I can go on living alone. I am worried, but the thought of having to pack everything up and move out of here is too much to comprehend.

______________________________________________

Add to that, having lost a few kilos of weight (Ozempic), I’m finding that my blood sugars are going low more often, meaning I feel myself getting the shakes. If I let it go too low (<4) I can feel myself getting a bit woozy, hazy, slow thinking. That’s what lack of sugar to the brain feels like. I’m well aware of the danger and can counter it by eating sweet stuff – jellybeans for example. It’s another thing I have to be careful of these days. Plus I’m slowly losing my sense of balance, which makes hanging clothes on the line difficult. Mostly the Silver Chain lady does it, but not always.

_____________________________________________

And now for something completely different. I’ve been watching a cooking program on Netflix called Five Star Chef, about a group of about eight (at the start) young trainee chefs at The Langham Hotel in London, a six star, cost-is-no-object type of hotel. It has two Michelin stars and these people are given various assignments – menus, table arrangements, small or large groups etc – and told that they must prepare five star, six star meals for either the three supervisors, or real guests. It’s not uncommon for guests to spend £500 on a dinner.

Holey moley! When money is no object, when no expense is to be spared, when perfection is mandatory, it’s amazing. It’s obscene, actually. To think that there are thousands of homeless people in British cities dependent on soup kitchens, sleeping rough, and these ultra-rich people are spending money as if it were water.

However, the program is fascinating. Slowly, the traines are whittled away and from the original eight, we’re down to three at the moment. There are only six episodes, so the next will be the final. Good stuff.

_____________________________________________

Great to see the women’s soccer finals being fought out at the moment, and the way the Matildas won 4-0 against Canada last night. I don’t actually watch the whole matches, but I’m interested in the results.

________________________________________

I’ve been involved in a thing called the ABC Study, the Australian Breakthrough Cancer Study. I don’t have cancer, but it has affected my family so they are trying to find links and clues. It mainly involves on-line questionnaires so far, but today I’ve had to provide fæcal samples to be sent off to Melbourne.

Ugh! UGH! I won’t go into details, but it took two attempts a week apart. I got it done this time, so I’ve got a padded bag that has to be posted off this afternoon. Thank goodness that’s over.

I’m OK now but I’ve been having a fair bit of angina and atrial fibrillation for the past year or so (to go along with all my other pains, but that’s another story).

Last Monday evening (10th) at 8pm I had some sudden strong pain in the middle of my chest. I had no hesitation – I knew I had to call 000. The ambulance was here within about 10-15mins (and I had all my bags packed and ready to go). The guys asked me where I wanted to go, which hospital??? Huh? They said “Don’t go to Joondalup (15 mins away) as it’s blocked up. What about Hollywood Private?” Yes, I said, I used to go there 10 years ago and it feels like home to me. So, off we went, about 45mins drive. The pain had gone by then.

I spent the next 4hrs or so in the ED, bored out of my skull. They hooked me up to an ECG and BP cuff, but it took 1 1/2 hrs before a doctor came to see me. Ugh.

Anyway, they did blood tests but said I wasn’t having a heart attack and there was nothing really wrong. I felt OK by then. They said I didn’t need to stay, but it was 1.30am by then and I thought the next line would be, “We’ll keep you in overnight.” But they said if they admitted me, it would cost me a min of $250, so, what would a taxi home cost? Weigh it up. Answer – a taxi costs $99.80 to my place. So at 2am that’s what I did, getting home at 2.30am. Slept like a log.

So I’ve got a GTN spray (niroglycerine under the tongue) and fluid reduction tablets and all’s well that ends well. Fun. Not.

________________________________________

But did I mention pain? Bloody hell, I have pain! It’s non-specific nerve pain, in all kinds of places, mainly in my right chest, right arm and hand, legs, anywhere and everywhere. The Norspan patches help a lot but don’t fix it completely. I’m reluctant to use them too much as I don’t want to become habituated in case they lose their effectiveness.

It makes me wonder what the future holds. Is this the way it’s going to be from now on?

___________________________________________

I’ve been put onto Ozempic, the appetite suppressant, and it’s working well, but for the first few days after the weekly injection, it makes me feel a bit tummy upset. That’s kind of what it’s supposed to do. But last Thursday’s was especially noticeable.

The good news is that I’ve lost nearly 5Kg in the past 8 weeks. I can feel the difference. It’s good.

Plus the heart doctor has put me on to a diuretic to reduce fluid in my system. I took that for the first time along with the Ozempic. Whoo hoo, urrrrgggh! I felt sick and dizzy and woozy. I’ve been there before with diuretics – I don’t think I can tolerate it.

____________________________________________

On top of that, I think I’ve got a kidney stone – left side, dull ache, not the full blown kidney stone pain, thank goodness, but it’s making me very nervous. I have a referral to a urologist but with all that’s been going on in the past couple of weeks, I ha’ven’t made the appointment yet. Monday!

So all in all, I am not feeling very well!

________________________________________

I’m pretty angry about the Verada that my “mate” has returned. It’s not in roadworthy condition.

First, the rear tyres are illegal. Damn, I am angry about this.

Second, the power steering is now so bad as to almost make the car undriveable. It was fairly bad when he borrowed it in February 2022, but if you kept the fluid topped up, it was fine. But now it tries to pull the wheel out of my hands, regardless of the fluid level. Unfortunately, even a second hand steering rack is about $600. Plus fitting.

Grrrr.

_______________________________________

I’m still waiting on the replacement dishwasher that NRMA insurance were going to supply, as well. The old one died on 16 March with the ceiling collapse (I saw my diary the other day) and so I’ve been waiting ever since. I’ve complained to NRMA about using Betta Electrical in Rockingham as the suppliers, who say they can’t get a machine.

So I finally seemed to persuade NRMA to use Appliances On-line, who seem to say they have stock. But the weeks pass and nothing happens. What’s going on? Bit fed up – this is nearly six months waiting now. I’m running out of clean dishes 🙂 !!