Air-con

At last, our air-conditioning was installed yesterday.

It's a ducted system, so there are no ugly units hanging off the wall or sticking through windows. There's just round vents that you hardly notice in the ceiling in each room.

Not that we really needed to, but we had it on in the bedroom last night (the air-con that is, stop sniggering up the back). It is so quiet. All you can hear is a slight breeze blowing under the bedroom door.

It's just a pity that we're having such a mild winter this year. We don't really need the air-conditioning on. Normally in mid January I'd be sitting here typing this shirtless, with a pedestal fan blowing on my back. I'm in a t-shirt at the moment and the fan is silent.

Driving test, take two

I was going to bore you with a long description of how the test and the lesson before it went, but I don't think I'll bother.

I'll just tell you I passed.

I was still crunching the gears every now and then before the test, but not enough that it was making me nervous. I had the same examiner for this test, so I knew what to expect there. One less unknown to worry about.

For the first eighty percent of the test I was going really well, my gear changes were just about perfect. The latter part of it there were a few crunches, but not quite enough to fail me.

The one time where I thought I may have failed was going up a steep hill. I was like the little engine that could. We were in seventh gear, the revs were dropping and I was thinking I should change down to sixth, then the hill leveled out a bit. I though, beauty, we're accelerating, I don't need to change yet.

Then we rounded a bend and it got really steep. I got it into sixth, but because we lost so much momentum I was already too slow and had to go for fifth. There was no way it was going to pull in fifth on that steep a hill from that speed, so I stopped and demonstrated my hill start instead.

Col admitted afterward that he wanted to tell me to change down because he knew it was going to get steeper, but if he had it would have been an instant fail.

So, now my license has a purple border around it instead of a yellow one. I think it looks better that colour.

Weather

I've just added a couple of weather banners in my sidebar from Weather Underground. As you can see, one is for Brisbane and one is for Hanoi.

It doesn't seem right. It's winter in Hanoi at the moment and summer here in Brissy, so why are the temperatures almost the same?

Remember I mentioned it warmed up yesterday? Well it cooled down again today. It's actually quite pleasant.

Summer

We've been having a pretty mild summer so far. In fact, I heard the other day that this is the coldest summer we've had in Brisbane for the last 25 years.

Because it's been so mild, and because my desk at work has more than its fair share of air conditioning vents, I'm still wearing long sleeved shirts and singlets (vests, or undershirts for the non-Aussies) to work. Our air-con wasn't working for about the first hour and a half this morning, so I was fully expecting to go home this afternoon smelling a bit. I was starting to think that some of my clothing was going to have to come off.

Luckily the A/C started to work around 9am because there was no way I was going to the toilet just to remove my singlet. I was ready to get bare chested at my desk.

Now I don't mind that it's finally warming up here, but I am a bit pissed off at the timing. It could have waited another two weeks. We fly out to Hanoi on the 20th and it's winter over there. By the time we go, we're going to be acclimatised to the hot weather and we'll have to get used to the not-so-hot weather of North Vietnam.

Another driving lesson

I had another driving lesson yesterday.

It was a different instructor this time, Frank, and a different truck. This one didn't have the little switch on the side of the gear stick like the other trucks I've driven. This means it didn't have the intermediate gears. In other words, only eight forward gears and not sixteen.

I'm still crunching the gears occasionally, but at least I'm not coasting to a stop at roundabouts with the thing in neutral, which is why I failed the test last time.

Anyway, the test is this Thursday and it looks like I'll be tested by Col again. I'm glad about that as I know what to expect. One less thing to worry about. I must admit, I'm a lot more confident this time around.

Hanoi traffic

As we're going to Hanoi for holidays in a couple of weeks, I've been doing a lot of googling on things to see while there. I came up with this video of the traffic in Hanoi. It's not the best quality, but it gives you a good idea of what we're in for. Scary stuff.

Counting down to the holidays

It's now 18 days until Donna and I head off to Vietnam.

As part of the trip we've booked an overnight cruise on the MS Emeraude on Halong Bay. to get an idea of what we're looking forward to have a look at Brent and Larry's blog and follow the link to their pictures on Flickr.

It's funny the way things have changed now with holidays. When I was a kid you'd go away on holidays and your parents would maybe take a camera. If it was somewhere special they'd use slide film. Once you got back home they'd put the film in those little yellow envelopes and send it off to get it processed and you'd probably get it back about two weeks later. While you were on the actual holiday, Mum would probably be writing postcards to everyone. And this was just a holiday to Clacton or Walton-on-the-Naze, from Hertfordshire.

Fast forward about ten years and you'd most likely be using print film, which you could take to the chemist and go and pick up the prints about a week later. You'd still be sending postcards though.

Another ten years and you'd drop the films off at a one hour place close to work during morning tea and pick the photos up at lunch time, but you still might be sending postcards.

At the moment, my brother Laurie, his wife Jessica, and the kids Chelsea and Alicia, are in Taiwan, where Jessica comes from. We get regular e-mails from them and Laurie's posted a few pictures on Google Web Albums.

My oldest stepdaughter Jessica (popular name in this family) and her fiancee Brett are doing a bit of a road trip in New South Wales at the moment. They spent new years eve at Thredbo. They're keeping us updated via e-mail and SMS and uploading pictures to Brett's Flickr account.

I'll hopefully be updating this blog while we're away and posting a few pics for you.

I'd hate to be in the postcard business these days.