A Photo Challenge

I've been a bit slack on the blogging front over the past couple of years. Actually, I probably say that every time I blog. It's not that I don't have anything to blog about, there's the new job I started last year, the South Pacific cruise we went on a couple of months ago, etc. It's just that every time I think of something to blog about, the moment passes and I forget about it.

So I've set myself a challenge. On Saturday I started one of those 365 day photo-blogs. It came after someone at work nominated me to do a 7 day nature photo challenge on Facebook. After completing it, I decided to continue with it, but not just nature photography.

I'm hoping it'll do a few things; improve my photography, get me writing again, and give me a different outlook on things when I'm constantly looking at them from a photographer's perspective.

Instead of using Blogger, I figured I'd give Wix a try, as it's more of a website host, but with blogging capabilities. I guess there are other sites that would be more suitable, but this'll do me for now.

If you're interested, head on over to the website now.

Not a great way to spend a long weekend

It was the Queen's Birthday weekend here this past weekend. Now that I'm working pretty much full-time hours every week, I'd been looking forward to one extra day of sleeping in. Well, I did get to spend more time in bed, but not in the way I'd planned.

Donna and I have recently got in to the habit of having lunch out on a Sunday, usually down at Cleveland. It'll take us forever to try all the different eateries down there and the markets are also on every Sunday. We decided on fish and chips. I won't tell you where we had it, because what happened later had nothing to do with the quality of the food, which was excellent, but it may look that way.

About two or three hours after lunch, I started feeling what, I took to be, a bit of indigestion. Probably the Greek salad, or the bread-crumbs on the fish, I thought. About ten minutes later it was getting worse, so I grabbed an antacid and chewed on that. By about thirty minutes, I was writhing around on the bed, trying to find a position that was comfortable and would relieve the pain in my guts. I was sweating and hyperventilating.

A few years ago, Donna had a very similar pain which resulted in an ambulance being called. It turned out to be pancreatitis. After a couple days in hospital, waiting for her lipase levels to go down, she was released. I've since read up on pancreatitis and how dangerous it can be if not treated quickly. I was starting to think I had the same thing. When she asked if I wanted her to take me to a doctor or the hospital, I told her to call an ambulance. It was the first time I've ever been a patient in an ambulance.

After having all manner of things stuck to me and in me to monitor my vitals and help reduce the pain (there was a lot of that, let me tell you), the doctor reassured me that it definitely wasn't my heart or lungs. It was a relief that I wasn't having a heart attack, not that I had thought that, but still. He used a portable ultrasound unit to examine me in the area that was most painful and said it appeared my gallbladder was enlarged.

That night I was moved into EPU, the Emergency Planning Unit, where I was told I would have a proper ultrasound the next morning and possibly a CT scan after that. There were a few others in the unit with me, including a nineteen year old girl opposite, who evidently had gallbladder pain as well.

The next morning I had my official ultrasound where it was confirmed that, I did indeed have an enlarged gallbladder, but there didn't seem to be any stones that would have caused it. It was going to have to come out.

Later that day I was moved to another ward, but not before hearing that the girl opposite was going home with a course of antibiotics. Did I envy her? Damned right I did. I'd never been a hospital patient in all my fifty years, wasn't even born in one, and here I was on the eve of having surgery all of a sudden.

In the new ward I met two other patients, one of whom was also having gallbladder trouble. It turns out it's a lot more common than we realise, perhaps because of our lifestyle of fatty foods.

So, I lay in another bed in another part of the hospital. They seemed to be getting progressively more comfortable at least. I had various drips in my arms, mostly saline to keep me hydrated, and anti-biotics to fight infection. Pain-killers were given to me regularly as well. I don't know how I would have felt without them.

Dinner came around that evening and it was a lamb patty. Lamb is about the fattiest meat you can get and I was supposed to be on a low-fat diet. At least the mashed potato, veges and stewed apple were rather nice, albeit far from satisfying. That night had be the most uncomfortable night's sleep I've ever had. I always sleep better on my side, but could only do that on my left side. I had a fever, so staying in one position left me feeling sweaty and disgusting on one side. Trying to lay on my right side was just an exploration of my pain threshold. It's not very high.

I was 'nil by mouth' the next morning, so it wasn't very nice when a tray full of cereal, bread and butter, yoghurt, orange juice and tea was put on the table next to my bed. The patient next to me was temporarily in the same boat until he'd had an ultrasound. The guy opposite sat and ate breakfast, his enjoyment tempered only by the guilt he felt about eating in front of us.

I always had this idea that they got you to count backwards from ten when they administered the anaesthetic before surgery. All I remember is laying on the operating table, an oxygen mask over my face, while the surgical team got me ready, then waking up in the recovery room seemingly only moments later. It turned out the operation was a success and they'd got my necrotic and gangrenous gallbladder out without any complications. The only problem they'd had was getting the breathing tube down my throat.

Surprisingly lucid, considering I'd been under a general anaesthetic, I was wheeled back to the ward a few hours after I'd left. There was a new patient opposite me and one of the old ones had been moved to another ward.

I slept so much better that night and was even able to get out of bed unassisted to go to the toilet several times in the night.

I'm now home recovering. I found our bed is very difficult to roll over in when you've had abdominal surgery, so I either crawl out of bed backwards and get back in the other way, or Donna rolls me over. It'll get easier, I know it will.

Who'd have thought, this time last week I'd be sitting here recovering from surgery for a problem I didn't even know I had.

Thanks to everyone at the Redlands Hospital for looking after me so well and the paramedics from the Queensland Ambulance Service that got me there.

Driving a bus

Back when I first started this blog, I was working in the city and catching the bus to work. In fact, that's what inspired me to start blogging, in a round about way.

We were sitting at a red light one morning and the bus was making funny noises and the suspension seemingly levelling the bus out. I wondered if the driver was doing it, or whether it was automatic, so I googled it when I got home and came across Dave's blog. I thought, I could do that, blogging I mean, and started this blog shortly after. I've since created a couple of other blogs and had a couple of other jobs.

About three weeks ago I started a new job and I won't give you any guesses what it is, because it's in the title. I'm now driving buses for a living.

I didn't wipe the lens properly before I handed my iPhone over to a colleague, so the pic is a bit dodgy.

We started off the training early this month, covering all sorts of stuff like customer services, driver fatigue, ticketing, manual handling, even national security. The classroom stuff was interspersed with route familiarisation where we took it in turns driving around the area the company services. We have several types of bus in the fleet, from old, manual Volvo B10Ms to nice flash Mercedes coaches, so we got a broad taste. The pic above is during our route familiarisation, in a Mercedes low floor bus. I have to publicly state here that the trainers at my company are brilliant. They're serious about the job they do, but they also have great senses of humour.

Today was my first time with paying passengers and it's quite a leap from driving around with your course-mates sitting behind you, ribbing you when you mount a curb, or make a wrong turn, to carrying real passengers that might ring up the depot and complain.

I had a split shift today, the first part of which was an express run into the city. My mentor did the run in and I drove empty back to the depot. That particular bus had brakes that you needed to stand on to get them to work. In Aussie parlance, bus 512 was a shit-box. I pretty much had the hang of it by the time we got back though.

The afternoon shift was a school run and fortunately it was one of the better schools in the area, the one my step-daughters attended. The bus for this run had brakes the total opposite of the morning run, to the point that it didn't take long before I realised the kids had noticed I was braking a bit heavy. A bus full of kids going, "Ooooh!" and bags falling over every time I pulled up, tends to teach you to be gentle. I did get some feedback from one of the kids, whose mum is a friend of the family. Apparently I did okay, not sure what that says about the other drivers doing that run.

I'm on a big learning curve at the moment. I've sort of got the hang of getting 12 metres of bus through some pretty tight turns and chicanes, but I still need to get used to the ticketing, remembering to stop at bus stops and then open the doors, and learning the routes. At the moment though, it's a pretty good job and it seems there are quite a few old hands at the depot who agree.

Did I mention the pay's not bad too?

Bee Vomit

We recently did a native bee course with Dr Tim Heard at Redlands Indigiscapes. Tim's a recently retired entomologist who worked with the CSIRO and really knows his bees.

There were equal parts theory and practical. We learnt about the different species of native bee and how they differ from honey bees, how they breed, make their hives and honey. Did you know that honey is actually bee vomit?

In Australia there are three main species of native stingless bees that are social, as in they build hives and work together. Two of these are kept for their honey, Tetragonula carbonaria and Tetragonula hockingsi. They look similar, but the latter are slightly bigger, they don't build their hive in a nice pattern like the Carbonaria and they're more likely to bite you if you upset them, as we found out later.

After the initial bit of theory, we went outside to where a hollow log full of bees had been left. The hive had been rescued by one of the workshop participants and Tim showed us how to split it and transfer half into a purpose built box.

Above is a Carbonaria hive that was completely filling the inside of the log. The spiral bit on the left is the brood chamber. It's laying on its side at the moment, as you'll see later, but the bees build it in a spiral pattern, gradually working upwards. The larvae develop inside, then emerge and the chamber is pulled apart. The wax is then re-used to make another chamber for another baby bee. Once they run out of room at the top, they start again at the bottom. It's a bit like a bee conveyor belt.

The stuff to the right is a mixture of building materials made from resin and wax, as well as honey and pollen. Those yellow bits you can see are the pollen.

This is the same log, with the top part of the brood chamber removed and placed in a new box, along with some of the building materials and food that the bees will need. There's enough left in this hive for them to rebuild.

After being shown how to transfer from the log, we were shown how to split a hive.

This is another Carbonaria hive, or the bottom half of it at least. The pollen is more obvious in this one. You can tell it's a Carbonaria hive by the shape of the brood and also by the black entrance at the bottom of the picture.

The idea is, the top part of the hive is removed and placed on top of an empty bottom, and an empty top is place on this bottom. The bees will then rebuild and eventually fill both hives and a year later you can split them again. If you're lucky, there'll also be about a kilo of honey a year later too and native bee honey sells for about $70 per kilo.

After some lunch and a bit more theory, we went outside to split a Hockingsi hive. These bees don't build their brood chamber in a spiral, so it's a bit harder to split. In fact some bee keepers use a hive that has the two halves side by side, like our friends John and Kara. The idea is that the brood is split vertically instead of horizontally. You can see in this picture that the entrance to the hive is a lot cleaner than the Carbonaria hive.

After splitting this hive, the top part was removed, the hive is actually three pieces, as shown here

There's a partition between the top level and the second one that the bees won't build the brood past. In honey bee hives, I believe there's a mesh between these two levels that the workers can get through, but the queen can't. This is where most of the honey ends up.

To get at the honey, this evil looking device is used to mash up the contents.

The honey is then poured through a strainer to remove all the bits of wax, resin and pollen.

I mentioned that the Hockingsi bees are more likely to bite than the Carbonaria. Fortunately, none of them sting and the bite isn't as bad as, say, an ant bite. Some of those little buggers bite you then fling formic acid into the wound. Ouch!

That said, it can't be very pleasant when one climbs up your nostril and bites you inside the nose as one did to Tim. Here's a small selection of the Hockingsi bees defending their hive from him.

 

By the time the hives were put back together, our group resembled a troop of monkeys, everyone picking bees off of each other.

I you're interested in doing a workshop with Tim, check out his website here. I'd also recommend having a look at his YouTube channel here.

New business

It's been a while since my last post, in fact I've only blogged twice in the past year. So what have I been up to in the interim?

Well, I'm no longer a postie. Back in September last year, I got sick of being told I needed to get my times down. I was riding as quickly as I could between letterboxes, without being unsafe, but the time I was spending at each letterbox was slowing me down. The only way I was going to get quicker was to read and ride. That is, read the addresses on the next piece of mail while riding along. It's exactly what new posties are trained not to do, but all experienced posties know it's the only way to get the job done on time. I also got sick of having to ride around cars that were illegally parked on footpaths and get off the bike because people parked their cars right up against the letterbox. And then there were the occasional dogs, always small, snappy ones.

So, I left the postie job and started looking for something better, preferably something where I could use my degree. I also started writing again and published my second novel, more about that later.

By the end of the year and no luck on the job front, I decided it was time I did something to improve my chances and enrolled in a Graduate Certificate course at the University of Southern Queensland. As I've always wanted to be involved in the publishing industry, preferably as a writer, I decided to study editing and publishing. I figured it would probably improve my writing, but might also help me get some freelance work as a proofreader, or editor.

As a result, back in May, Redlands Editing and Proofreading Services was formed, with Donna and I as the owners. You may notice the banner in my sidebar on the right. Here's another copy of it.

Before anyone says the bit to the left of the R looks like a part of a woman's body, it's a fountain pen okay. It never occurred to me that it was anything other than a fountain pen until my 18 year-old nephew saw our business cards.

But what about that second novel? I hear you ask.

Well, I went through the first one recently looking for something to use in one of my uni assignments. In hindsight, it seems pretty amateurish now. I'm already working on books three and four, and four is so much better than the rest that I'm planning on completely rewriting the first three, combining them into one book. The first two are still available at Amazon and Smashwords, but not for much longer. When they do come out again, they'll be under a different name. I'll let you know what it is at a later date.

In the mean-time, if you know anyone that needs the services of a proofreader, send them my way.

Penny Auctions and a Cheap GoPro

A couple of years ago, I was lucky enough to be asked if I wanted to help out with a TV shoot for a local lifestyle program called Great South East. My niece Katrina and her husband Tony run Redlands Kayak Tours and the show was doing a segment on them. Here's the segment. That's me in closeup, about half way through, in the blue cap and green PFD.

The cameraman, as well as using the normal ENG camera that news cameramen use, had a small video camera, not much bigger than a match box, that he fixed to the front of the host's kayak. I was amazed, especially when I found out the price. Here was a camera being used by a professional TV cameraman that cost less than $400. It was the first time I'd seen a GoPro and I wanted one.

Back then, I was filling shelves in Coles, so I wasn't making much money. The pay situation hasn't really improved since then, so I haven't been able to justify buying one. The latest model, the Hero 3+ Black Edition is about $529 and the Silver Edition about $429.

About a week ago, I read a news article about penny auctions. If you haven't heard about them, the idea is you register on their website, buy a certain number of bids, then use those bids in auctions on the site. Unlike eBay, every time someone bids once the auction is in it's last 20 seconds, the clock resets to (usually) 20 seconds. If you place a bid and no-one else bids inside those 20 seconds, then you win the auction. Each bid you place adds only 1 cent to the price. If you're the only person to bid on a particular item, then you get it for 1 cent, since the price starts at 0c.

Sounds too good to be true? Well, yes it is. There's a catch. Keep in mind that you've paid on average, 60c for each bid (depending on the website) and you may have bought about 100 bids. The chances of you being the only person to bid on an item are pretty small, although it does happen. If it's a sought after item, like an iPad or a camera, then the bidding will be furious and you could quite easily use up all your bids in your first auction. If you get out-bid, you've blown your money.

That's how the penny auction sites make their money. A $529 GoPro camera might sell for $29 for example, but that's 2900 bids at 60c a bid, which works out to $1740 worth of bids, plus the $29 winning price that the website gets. A pretty good profit, I'm sure you'll agree.

Well, I figured I'd give it a go, signed up with QuiBids and bought a block of 120 bids. They recommend you start off small and bid on something cheap to get a bit of practice and get an idea how the system works. I took their advice and the day after registering I won a set of electric salt and pepper mills for the princely sum of 1c. Yes, I was the only bidder. Add to that the delivery charge and it came to $9.90, for an item that retails for $19.

Emboldened by my win, I decided to bid for a GoPro Silver Edition, without success, wasting about 20 bids. Oh well, you can't win them all and I'd picked up a view bonus free bids from winning the mills, so I still had plenty of bids left.

The next day I tried again and hit the jackpot. Including postage, I got a GoPro Hero 3+ Silver Edition for $18.02c and it was in my hot little hands two days later.

I've since taken part in a few other auctions, for items such as iPads, backpacks, etc. My only other success so far is a Rank Arena Food Dehydrator, so now our bananas won't go to waste. I still have plenty of bids left and I'm getting pretty good at picking which auctions to avoid. Now if I can only get myself an iPad and that Dyson vacuum cleaner that Donna wants.

If you've come across this blog as a result of researching penny auctions to see if they're a scam, well, some of them are, some aren't. You can definitely lose a lot of money if you're not smart, even on a reputable site. There are plenty of stories of people maxing out their credit cards in one day, because they couldn't help themselves. If you're the kind of person that goes to the races and puts your money on a horse because you like its name, or the colour of its jockey's silks, then penny auctions are not for you. You'll be better off going to JB HiFi and paying full price for your GoPro. Incidentally, that's where QuiBids gets theirs from.

If you want to give it a go, here's the link to QuiBids http://qb.cm/r40456011

I should tell you though, if you follow that link and decide to register and buy a bid pack, I get 25 free voucher bids.  

A man in a bowtie

We had a bit of a problem with one of the local cockatoos deciding to destroy part of our vegetable garden this morning. He didn't eat anything, just bit some of our corn, silver-beat, lettuce and kale off at the base.

So we decided to do something about it. We enlisted the help of a man in a bowtie, because bowties are cool.

Smiffy. Official vege garden security

If that doesn't work, I'm going to turn that compost bin behind into a Dalek.

Ticking another box

I mentioned in a previous post that I'd managed to tick two boxes in my postie career on the same day.

One of those was dropping the bike, apparently everyone does it at some time. There are, however, different levels of dropping the bike. Today I took it to the next level and dropped it while I was riding it.

Here's the only injury I sustained, other than the injury to my pride.

It really bothers me when I see people riding scooters, or even proper motorcycles wearing short sleeves and skirts, especially when they're male. The grazing on my elbow was where it rubbed on the inside of my shirt-sleeve. Imagine what it would look like at 60 km/h on bitumen, with no protection. I landed on the grass. I have some pictures somewhere of the grazing I got when I stacked my 750 Zephyr a few years ago. I was wearing a proper motorcycle jacket, with armoured elbows, etc, and my elbow looked a lot worse than this, as did my knee.

So, how did I fall off, I hear you ask?

I'd just delivered to a house and looked at where my next delivery was. It was around the corner, meaning I had about four or five houses I could ride straight past to get to it. It's always safer, and faster, to ride on the road than the footpath, so I headed to the next driveway with the intention of getting onto the road. I didn't get to the driveway.

The next thing I know, my front wheel is sliding out from under the bike. I put my foot down to try and save it, but before I knew it I was lying on the grass, surrounded by my water-bottles, my scanner and a few loose items of mail. I rolled onto my back, uttered a naughty word then sat up and killed the ignition on the bike. It's amazing how quickly it all happens. One moment you're riding along without a care in the world, the next you're lying in a heap, wondering how that happened.

Luckily there was no damage to the bike, those things are bullet-proof. I guess it could have been a lot worse too. One of my colleagues collided with a roo a couple of weeks ago, he's now off sick with a cracked rib.

I'm wondering if there would have been any damage if I'd been riding one of these, our new postie bikes. I hope I'm not the first one to find out.

Trees

I like trees, you can cut them down and make really useful stuff like boats, and books.

You can use them to hold up birds, so the cats don't get them.

You can plant them near your letterbox and let them grow wild, so the postie can't get close enough to deliver your bills.

You can buy an expensive house and poison them to improve your view, forgetting that the trees are actually part of the view.

They also have another use that people don't always think of.

While I was delivering mail on Friday, I looked at the time and realised I was really going well. It was a light load and I reckoned I'd finish well before three. A good way to finish off the week. I'd had a good week too, Monday to Wednesday had all been beautiful, weather-wise. I'd had light loads and no junk mail to deliver. Thursday was a bit crappy, because it rained, but Friday looked to be good. There was rain around, but the way I was going, I'd be finished before it hit.

Then, just over a third of the way through my run, I did a u-turn across a street and noticed the bike was feeling a bit wibbly-wobbly. I looked down at the rear tyre after delivering some mail to number 4 and thought, that tyre shouldn't look that wide.

I'd got my first puncture since I started the job.

I rang the depot and they told me a spare bike was on its way. In the mean time, a lady asked me if I was okay and offered me a cuppa, which I politely declined. Caffeine and 4 hours on a bike without access to a toilet don't really mix. Shortly after that, someone from across the road came over for a chat and he offered me the use of a pump and some sunscreen, since by now I'd taken off my helmet and the sun was out.

He mentioned the soggy footpath on his side of the street. I'd discovered it pretty soon after starting the job. It's really waterlogged and a bit scary to ride on. I assumed it was a leaky water-main, since I can see the water-meters there, but it seems the reason for it was something else.

This particular street is at the bottom of a hill. A little way up the hill, one of the neighbours used to have a lot of trees in his backyard. Apparently he cut down about forty of them. That's forty trees that are, or were, sucking all the excess moisture out of the ground. Once the trees were cut down, all that water ran to the bottom of the hill and turned the footpath into a swamp. Before the trees were cut down, the footpath was always dry.

It's a common problem in areas where trees have been cleared, especially on hills. Where the trees used to draw the water up to the surface on the hill, that water now comes closer to the surface on lower ground, bringing with it salts from the under-lying rocks. The resulting salinity makes the land unusable, since nothing will grow in it.

I don't know about salinity in this particular case, the grass there is certainly loving the extra water. However, it was a good example of one of the things I learned about at uni in one of my ecology units.

Trees might spoil your view, drop their leaves in your gutter, get in the way of that swimming pool that you want in your backyard, but they're not just a source of timber, or a habitat for wildlife. They're more important than that.

Ticking the Boxes

When I started working for Aussie Post, someone said there are two things guaranteed during your career as a postie, you will drop your bike and you will get attacked by a dog. I managed to tick both those boxes within fifteen minutes of each other this week.

I should mention right from the start, neither of these incidents were major.

Wednesday was an absolutely miserable day, it was raining, but despite it being winter here in Australia, it was uncomfortably warm in my wet weather gear. I was feeling a bit off colour on the way to work. You know that feeling, when you start to feel seasick and the more you think about it, the worse it gets?

I started off on my round, going a lot slower than usual, partly because of the wet ground, partly because I had junk mail to deliver, meaning I had to stop at nearly every letterbox, and partly because my mind wasn't fully on the job, due to feeling ill. About five streets into the run, I had to get off the bike to post something at the back of the letterbox, as it wouldn't fit through the slot at the front. It's something that will happen more and more in the future, as people shop more online.

I put the side-stand down, slipped the bike into neutral and applied the park-brake, then got off. As I was leaning over, discovering the parcel wouldn't fit in the back of the letterbox either, I heard that familiar 'crump' sound, as the bike toppled over and letters and rubber bands spilled out of the front carrier.

I swore, reached under the bike to turn off the fuel tap and ignition, then picked up the bike. They're actually quite easy to pick up by yourself and, as they have a side-stand on each side, I could lean it over the other way, where it wouldn't fall again.

After having rung my team-leader to let him know what had happened, checking the bike for damage, removing my jacket and helmet because I was starting to sweat, I managed to get the bike started again and was off. Actually, I think it was trying to start the bike that made me sweat, it took a while.

On the very next street, right at the top of the hill, is a house I don't always deliver to, even if I have mail for them. The reason is, their letterbox is at the top of their driveway, instead of down by the footpath where it's supposed to be. I can usually ride the bike to the top of the driveway, then reverse the bike down, but if there's a car parked in the way, their mail goes back into my pannier and I try again the next day. I just can't get safe access.

As I approached the house, I had already put their mail away, as I could see I couldn't get access to the letterbox again. This time though, there was a dog running toward me down their driveway and into the road.

Now there's another dog on my run that often comes running toward me. He's a Staffy and just wants to say hello. He invariably has a ball in his mouth. Once I've patted him and handed his owner the mail, he leaves me alone.

I wasn't sure if this dog was the same, but slowed to a stop to greet it, giving it the benefit of the doubt.

The little bastard grabbed my boot and tried to drag me off my bike.

Here's an example of what it looked like.

I blew my horn three times to try and get the attention of the owners, but as soon as I did, the dog walked off, as if nothing had happened. It was like it was saying, "I didn't do anything". We're told not to kick out at dogs when they attack, since you may fall of the bike. I reflected as I rode away that, had I kicked this particular toilet-brush-with-teeth, it would have ended up in Ormiston, the next suburb in that direction.

Things only got worse after that. The rain got heavier, my right pannier clipped one of those plastic pillar thingies that have something to do with the underground power and I nearly collided with a letterbox. By the time I got to one of the retirement villages on my run, where I usually get off the bike and have a bite to eat and a drink, I'd decided that carrying on the way I was, I would probably kill myself. I rang the depot and told my boss I was coming back in sick and had the rest of the day off.

Yesterday, on the other hand, was a great day for being a postie. The weather was beautiful, there wasn't a lot of mail and no junk mail. When I got to my last pick up, someone else had grabbed four bundles and delivered them for me. I knew he was going to do that, but not that much. So, a great day, working outside, and an early mark. Couldn't ask for better than that. I'm finding the job much easier now. The first few weeks were killers. Now I'm more used to it physically, it's just a case of plodding along until I get to the end of the run and I'm gradually getting quicker.

I just hope I don't have too many days when it rains and there's junk-mail while I'm feeling ill.

Helmet hair

I've now been delivering mail for Australia Post, for a week and a half.

My round should take me about four hours to complete. I'm currently spending about five and a half hours on the bike per day and that's with someone else doing a couple of bundles for me. To explain about bundles. When the mail is sorted, it's bundled up with rubber bands and each bundle is numbered. I start my run with bundle number one, then when I finish that, I turn around and grab bundle number two out of my pannier, put it in my front carrier and continue from there until I run out of mail. Then I ride to the nearest drop box and refill my panniers with another eight or nine bundles. All up, there's around 1200 addresses on my round, in about twenty-five bundles.

I started learning the round last Monday by following my mentor, Jodi, around. He's been doing the job now for ten years and seems to know the area like the proverbial back of his hand. The first thing that surprised me is how tiring it is. Bouncing around for five or so hours really takes it out of you. The bike is actually quite comfortable, with a really nice soft seat, but most of our footpaths aren't concreted, so they're uneven to say the least.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, I did half the round while Jodi did the other half, then he came to check and see how I was getting on. The rest of the week, I did pretty much the whole round, with Jodi doing a few bundles here and there. This week it's been more of the same, I'll do most of the round, while someone does a few bundles so that I'm learning the round, but not spending too long getting it finished.

I'll eventually get faster at the job. At the moment I'm spending a lot of time having to do u-turns because I've ridden straight past a letterbox. There's a couple of reasons for this. A lot of people don't seem to see the necessity of having a number on their letterbox, which is okay if you're in a middle of your street and your neighbours either side have big numbers on theirs. If the house is on a corner though, I don't know the number until I get to the next house, then I curse, turn the bike around and ride back.

More annoying than the lack of numbers are the letterboxes that are hidden by hedges, or have garden beds in front of them. The ones that are hidden can't be seen as I ride up to them. I usually see them as I'm going past or when I look around wondering where it is. The ones with garden beds in front of them are just plain dangerous, as I have to either lean right out to deliver the mail, or park the bike on uneven ground and get off, hoping the bike won't fall over. We're actually within our rights to not deliver if we have difficulty getting access to a letterbox, but if we did that every time, we'd be taking a lot of mail back to the depot, and we'd still have to leave a card anyway. It's amazing how many people park their cars in the way of the letterbox too, which is actually illegal if they're blocking the whole footpath. The council could make a fortune in parking fines if they followed me around for the day.

I'm gradually getting used to it all though. I'm certainly less tired at the end of the day and I'm getting to know where all the hidden letterboxes are and what the best approaches are to get to the awkward ones. I'm also getting a lot better at my slow riding. The funny thing is, I can ride slowly around a parked car and between bushes and trees, but if I have to do a tight u-turn in the middle of the footpath, someone's driveway, or the street, where there's no obstacle, I still have trouble and usually end up putting my foot down.

One thing I'll definitely have to do is cut my hair more often. Check out this helmet hair.

This is how I come home from work every day, with three ridges on the top of my head.

Going Postal

I started a new job on Monday.

Since leaving my Airservices job back in September, I've spent most of my time writing novels. Codename: Digby is available for sale through Amazon and most other eBook websites such as Kobo. Codename: Greenland is in the editing stage and I hope to have it ready for sale some time in June. Unfortunately, my books aren't going to make me rich, so I needed to take the plunge and get a job.

Australia Post are always advertising for posties, so a few weeks ago I put in my application and after going through the process of interviews, police checks and a medical, I finally got a call, Wednesday before last, offering me a job and telling me I was to start on the following Monday. A big difference to the eleven months it took me to get into my previous job.

Monday to Wednesday this week was all induction, filling out paperwork, learning about Australia Post and who does what, security, health and safety. We even had a session on the power of positive thinking.

Thursday and Friday was when the fun started.

If you don't live in Australia or New Zealand, you may not know that we deliver the mail here on a little Honda CT110 motorbike. They're known as postie bikes here, because Australia Post is the biggest purchaser of them. Basically, they're a 1980s technology, single cylinder four-stroke, with a centrifugal clutch and they're practically bullet proof. We had to be trained to ride them safely.
I must admit to being a bit nervous on Thursday morning, it's been over six years since I was last on a motorbike and that was a 750cc Kawasaki Zephyr, the only bike I've ever crashed.

After introductions and some theory in the classroom, the ten of us went downstairs and were shown the bikes and how to do our daily inspections, something that has to be done every morning before going out on the rounds.

We started off by just riding around the range, a big parking lot kind of area. We had to go up to second gear, then back down to first and practice slowing down for give-way signs and stopping at stop-signs. When you're used to using a clutch to change gear, it takes a bit of getting used to, not having to do anything with the left hand.

From there, we did slow riding, which involved slaloms, doing u-turns in really tight spaces and riding a fixed distance of ten metres in over ten seconds. If my maths is correct, that means about 0.3 kilometres per hour. I managed to do it in about fourteen seconds. By lunch time, I was absolutely loving riding the little Honda.

After lunch we did some emergency stopping, getting up to thirty-five kmh, then hauling on the brakes at a certain point and stopping as quickly as possible without skidding, or falling off. We also did some figure eights, where we had two groups of six riding around and around, crossing each other's paths in the middle and not crashing. The day was finished with more slow riding practice.

Friday, we started off by inspecting our bikes under the watchful eyes of our two instructors, to make sure we were doing it correctly and not forgetting anything. It's something we can be audited on out at the depots.

This time we had panniers fitted to the bikes, each with about twelve kilograms of phone books in them. We're allowed to carry up to twenty five kilos of mail on the bikes, twelve and a half on each side. It makes the bike about two feet wider and, needless to say, I knocked over a traffic cone within about ten seconds of riding off. The panniers make the bike wider, but they also make it more stable, because the weight is low down. It's a bit like the pole a tightrope walker uses for balance.

We did more slow riding and I found it harder this time. It wasn't so much the extra weight on the bike, but the instructors telling me to look up all the time and distracting me. If I looked up, I couldn't see the cones and was worried I'd run over one, which I did. We did more figure eights and some more emergency stopping and an exercise where we had to come around a corner at about twenty-five then stop quickly, before going onto counter-steering. Essentially, counter-steering is swerving around an obstacle, but if you want to go right you turn the handle-bars to the left. Trust me, it works, it's all to do with gyroscopic procession.

We then did a little exercise where we had to ride up a short incline, pretend to deliver a letter, then reverse the bike and turn around so we could ride off. It's not as easy as you might think, since you have to make sure you don't touch the front brake and you have to be really careful you don't tip the bike downhill. Then we rode over to three letterboxes, all at different heights and pretended to deliver to those. There's a different technique for each one, for example, with a high letter box, we select neutral, put down the kick stand and use the park brake. Yes, they have a park brake on postie bikes.

Having now ridden up to some letter boxes, I was starting to feel like a postie.

After lunch we had our road ride. We followed one of the instructors to a nearby football field, attracting a lot of attention as we went. Twelve people on little red bikes in high viz gear tends to do that. At the football field, or rather next to it, we practiced picking up a dropped bike, then we practiced locking up a brake and recovering from the skid before it got too bad. It's amazing how quickly the ground went from wet grass to slippery mud.

From there we went to some back streets and played follow the leader, taking it in turns being the leader, while the instructor observed from second position behind you. We attracted a lot of attention here too, as it's school holidays at the moment, so there were plenty of little kids standing on the footpath watching us ride past and waving to us.

Once that was done, it was back to the school to do a quick theory test and then we were finished. It's hard to believe I got paid to have so much fun.

Next Monday I start learning my route. I'll follow another postie around on the first day and gradually deliver more and more mail over the following days, until I'll be delivering by myself the following week.

Getting paid to ride a motorbike on the footpath for four hours a day. How cool is that? And, I'll still have time to write my novels.

I'm not too sure about all this rain though.

Chooks

We got a couple of new chooks last Friday.

We first started keeping chooks, several years ago. A lot of people tend to get a new puppy when their dog dies. We tend to get a new flock of chooks when the last one of our old flock dies, or (dare I say it) meets the end of the axe.

We've always got commercial reds, aka, ISA browns. We thought we'd go for something different this time and got a couple of Australorps. If you're not in Australia, they're basically the Aussie breed of chook, based on the English Orpington, mixed with Rhode Island Reds and a few other breeds. They're black with a hint of green on their backs and a hint of red on their chests, nice looking birds. I wanted to call them Nig Nog and Golly Wog, but Donna vetoed that and so they're called Worcestershire and Soy.

Anyway, the postie zoomed along on his trusty 110cc steed this morning, and stopped, so I went out to see what new bills we'd received and the first thing I saw was a chook at the bottom of the stairs. The second thing was our next-door neighbour, Mike, saying, "there's a chook in your front yard."

Well, I grabbed said chook, after putting on my England football shirt, to protect me from her claws, chucked her over the back fence, then retrieved the phone bills from the letter box. Mike came round the corner with a big towel to help me catch her... "Oh, you got her?"

So we stood having a neighbourly chat for 10 or 15 minutes, then heard a flutter to my left, Mike's right. Sitting on the 5 foot high gate was the very same chook I'd just chucked over the fence.

"They're getting their wings clipped as soon as Donna gets home," says I.

We have an area in our backyard where the chooks are fenced in, it's a big fence. Inside that enclosure, they have a chicken coop. Our escapee was locked in the coop. About an hour and a half later, Donna came home and I told her what needed doing. In the mean time, our prisoner was making a lot of noise. I went downstairs and let her out and discovered she'd layed her first ever egg. Way to go NigNog, or Worcestershire, or whatever you call yourself, "Stormageddon", probably.

So. Problem sorted. The chooks have had their wings clipped. They won't escape now.

I went downstairs to check on them this evening and our escapee from this morning was hanging around the fence. I said hello, she looked up at me, got a bit agitated, then jumped up onto the top of the five foot high fence between us. She stayed there until Donna grabbed hold of her and gave her a cuddle. Stormaggedon my left cheek.

 I'm not sure if she's an escapee, or just loves us.

They're here

They've arrived.

The proofs of my book arrived this morning. I checked the tracking for them this morning and saw they had arrived at our local post office. Ten minutes later, I saw a white van coming up our street, with its indicator going. I almost did a Tom Cruise on the sofa.

I must say, it's strange looking at them, seeing my words inside. It's not the same as seeing them on my computer screen, or my eBook reader. They're an actual, real thing. I keep picking them up, thumbing through the pages and reading random paragraphs, before putting them back down again.

All that remains now, is for me to upload the final version, with (hopefully) all the mistakes fixed and it'll be available for sale in a couple of days.

Form an orderly queue, thank-you.

Book Trailer

The proofs for my new book should hopefully arrive this week, they've cleared customs in Sydney. Once I get them and I'm happy with them, I'll be making the paperback version available for sale.

I've already sold a few copies of the electronic version. Thanks to whoever you are, because you've probably found a few mistakes in it that won't be there in the paperback. Hopefully we've found them all.

I've just completed a book trailer to help me sell the novel. Hope you like it and if you want to download an electronic copy there's a link in my sidebar. I'll add a link to the paperback once it becomes available.

Becoming a Novelist

Back in 1990, I was on a working holiday in England. Actually, it was more holiday than work, so I had a bit of time on my hands. I'd always fancied trying my hand at writing fiction, so I went out and bought myself a decent pen and a pad of foolscap paper and started writing a novel. I'd been reading a lot of Stephen King and James Herbert at the time, so I tried to write a horror story.

Well, I never finished that one. I did start typing it up when I got back to Australia, on a real typewriter, remember them? It was probably more of a horrible story than a horror.

A few years later, I'd been reading a lot of Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams and decided to have another go. I got a lot further into this one, but again, never finished it. Donna and her youngest daughter were both a bit annoyed that they didn't get to see how it ended, but I didn't know how it was going to end myself.

When I left my last job in September, I decided to give it another go. I'd been reading a lot of Air Law, Meteorology, Air Traffic Services, etc, so I wasn't really influenced by anything this time.

I'm happy to say, I finally finished one and here's the result.

A lot of people have asked me what it's about. Well, it's probably best described as being in the espionage genre, but it's certainly not a James Bond or a Jason Bourne. Here's the blurb from the back of the book.

"On his days off, Jason "Megsy" McGraw likes nothing better than a quiet paddle in his homemade kayak.
Harry Carter likes nothing better than not getting killed while he works. When Jason finds Harry hidden away in the mangroves his life becomes one of bad guys, dodgy packages and a mystery from the cold war."

It's now available on Amazon Kindle for US 0.99c and you can buy it by clicking here. The paperback version should be available for purchase in a couple of weeks, once I've got my copy of the proofs. It'll cost US $14.95 and will be 240 pages.

It's been a great experience writing it and I've learned a lot. For example, plan your book before you write, especially if you have a lot of plot twists, otherwise you end up confusing yourself. I had to stop half way through and ended up writing half a dozen pages of notes, just to work out what was happening. There were also a few nights, when an idea came to me while I was in bed and I had to get up and make a note of it before I forgot.

Now I just have to learn how to sell it. Oh, and get started on the sequel.

Employment for Zoology Majors

Since leaving my ATC trainee job I've been taking it easy. I'm working on a novel and am in the middle of applying for another job related to ATC, but I'm not exactly overworking myself at the moment.

So when Hammy from Pelican and Seabird Rescue rang the other day looking for volunteers to help with a presentation at a local primary school, Donna and I said, "sure, we'll be glad to help".

I really shouldn't volunteer for stuff when I've had a few drinks.

We went around their place to try the costume on last night.

Actually, it wasn't too bad. All I had to do was walk into the room after Hammy and Donna finished their presentation, to the sound of "oohs" and "aahs" from twenty-odd four and five year-olds. They'd all line up for a hug from Mr Pelican and have their photo taken. Then I'd go back into the other room and wait for the next group, three groups in all. Afterwards, we were given morning tea.

Now if only I could get paid for a gig like that.

Waiting for my second performance

See, there is work out there for people with a zoology degree.

My last ATC school post

Those of you that have been following my exploits at the Airservices Learning Academy will no doubt be disappointed to find out that I'm no longer an ATC trainee.

No, I haven't qualified and been posted to a tower somewhere. I've left the job and we're heading back to Brisbane.

"Whatever for?" I hear you ask.

The training at the academy is basically in two parts. The first part is all theory and, for the tower stream, goes for about three and a half months. That's the part I finished about three weeks ago. Then you start in the simulators, which takes a further six or seven months. For the toweries you start off in the TMA sim, which is basically approach and departures, using radar. If you've ever seen the movie "Pushing Tin" it's a little like that, but not as full on. You then go into the radar tower sim, which is based on Melbourne's Tullamarine airport, followed by procedural tower, based on Launceston, and finally metro D, which is based on Moorabin. There are practical exams at the end of each of these modules.

If my some miracle you manage to get through all that, then they send you out to the field, where you finally get to control real aircraft. Five or six months later you may manage to get your ATC licence at last.

Well, I fell at the first hurdle. I just couldn't keep up with the pace. I said it wasn't as full on as "Pushing Tin", but it is still full on. By the time I got the hang of certain facets of it, something new would come up and I'd be on the back foot again. The more I got behind the harder it got to make it through a run. So, last weekend, after a couple of sick days, I had a good long think about what I was going to do. I decided I'd play it by ear and see how Monday morning's sim run went. If I hadn't improved after four days R and R, then it was time to call it quits.

I got half way through the first run of the day and was making so many mistakes, I just took off my headset and told my instructor that my decision had been made. I resigned the next day and drove out of the academy carpark for the last time on Wednesday.

We're now three quarters of the way through packing to return to Brisbane next week.

So, what's in the future for me? There are some Simulator Support Officer jobs coming up in Brisbane in the next few weeks, I'll be applying for one of those. Hopefully the training I've already had will help. SSOs, or blippies, are the people who move the aircraft around on the simulator screen and pretend to be the pilots that the trainees talk to.

In the mean time, I'm taking a break to do some fiction writing and a lot of kayaking.

Another ATC school post

A couple of weeks ago, as part of my ATC training, we had a field trip to Avalon Airport. There's not a lot of air traffic going into Avalon, but it's a great place to visit, especially when you get to check out the fire station and the Qantas maintenance hangar as part of your tour.

The whole idea of the visit was because of one of our theory subject, "aerodromes and other landing surfaces", but the other stuff was what made the day.

Many thanks to the ARFF guys that showed us round the fire station, and the people at Qantas that showed us around the maintenance hangars.

Avalon Tower, probably the cruisiest tower in Australia to be posted to, 11 movements a day

The view from Avalon tower

The fire station at the airport, that's truck 13 on the left

I got to sit in a fire truck, boyhood dream

Next time you're heading off on holidays and feel rumblings under your feet after the plane takes off, this is why.

Naked airliner seats in a 767.

What's under the hood.

That's the black boxes, those orange thingies.

My mate Matt, checking out the crew rest area in a 747.

Scrotes

If you're a fan of the old TV show "The Bill", you'll know what the title of this post means.

Because I'm training as a tower controller, I have to qualify as a weather observer as well. This week several of us have been doing the observers course at the Bureau of Meteorology's training centre in Broadmeadows.

Now, there's a couple of things I should mention here. For two years running I applied for a job with the BoM as a trainee observer. I only just missed out last year, in fact the guy that let me in the door on the first day of the course on Monday, was on the interview panel last year. And yes, he did remember me and was nice enough to say I got very close to being offered the job. The other thing to mention is that when we were researching where to look for accommodation before we moved down to Melbourne, everyone said avoid Broadmeadows.

Day three of our course ended this afternoon and as I was walking up to the car, I couldn't help thinking the driver's side window looked like it was open. You know that sinking feeling you get when you just know something isn't right. Then I got closer and realised the driver's side window didn't exist anymore.

Well it did, it just happened to be spread all through the car.

What really pissed me off, was the fact that the only thing they stole was the $200 GPS stuck to the windscreen. Even though it's brand new, it's probably worth less than the window they broke to get at it. The inconvenience of having to: a) clean out the glass before driving home, b) drive home during a Melbourne winter with drizzling rain* coming in coming in the window, c) make an insurance claim, d) get the window fixed, that's what pisses me off more than the missing GPS. To top it all off, I have an exam tomorrow morning to finish off the course.

I'm sure my colleague Matt wouldn't agree, but it's some consolation that I wasn't the only one robbed. Matt was parked next to me and had his iPod and sunnies nicked. Unfortunately, the value of them was over $500, which means his insurance might not cover them for the full value.

I've got to say, the BoM staff were great in the way they helped out, what with calling the police, helping to clean out our cars, etc.

My instructor on the course said to me before I left for home, "lucky you didn't get on the trainee observer's course, you'd be parking here every day for a year".

See, there's always a silver lining. Since we've been studying clouds this week, I'll be asking him tomorrow what the code is for a cloud with silver lining.

* drizzling and rain are actually two different things, meteorologically speaking, as are showers. I'm using a bit of artistic licence here.