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You are in The Foyer of the Chat Room. The Chat Room is a place for friends to meet and interact with each other in 'real time'. Here we have rooms designed for discussions about specific subjects. If you are a visitor your access to some of these rooms will be restricted. Visitors may visit The Foyer, The Public Bar and The Suggestion Box only. Friends of the Chat Room will be added by invitation only. Some of you will already have received an invitation, but if you haven't got one yet, don't worry. Some of you will have a membership just waiting for you to tell us that you want it. Others will receive one after we've determined that you're a nice guy/gal. Just go to the suggestion box and leave a message to let us know that you would like to become our Friend. Friends may visit all rooms in the Chat Room, excluding the Board Room. The Board Room is exclusively for the use of Chat Room Administrators.

The Rooms...

The Foyer... This room does not allow comments. The purpose of this room is to advise Friends and Visitors of the rules and regulations of The Chat Room. Please read the rules carefully before proceeding, as a failure to comply with these rules may result in expulsion and permanent banning from The Chat Room. Open to everyone.

The Public Bar (admin, tinacee)... This is an open chat room, and the only chat room that visitors may chat in. The rules and regulations of The Chat Room must be adhered to in this room, as in all rooms of the blog. Interaction in this room will be used as a guide by the administrators in applications for 'Friend' membership. Comments are allowed, but this room will be monitored carefully to ensure that the rules are strictly adhered to. Open to everyone.

The Suggestion Box (admin, kittyrex)... This is the room to visit if you would like to become a Friend of The Chat Room. Leave a comment and let us know that you would like to become a Friend. Chat Room Administrators will vote on your application and we will add you if your application has been accepted. It may take some time for your application to be seen by all administrators, so please be patient. The Suggestion Box is also the place to make suggestions on the running of the Chat Room. Again, leave a comment. Open to everyone.

The Couch (admin, Rinny)... A discussion on entertainment. TV, Videos, DVD's, games, etc. Friends and Administrators only.

The Darkroom (Admin, aries67)... A discussion on photography and everything to do with it. Friends and Administrators only.

The Departure Lounge (admin chica)... A discussion on travel. Local, interstate or overseas. Friends and Administrators only.

The Library (admin TheBat45)... A discussion on literature. Books, magazines, etc. Friends and Administrators only.

The News Room (admin Plonka, gryphonn)... A discussion on news and current affairs. Friends and Administrators only.

The Playing Field (admin cc1804)... A discussion on all topics concerned with sports and sportspeople. Friends and Administrators only.

The Kitchen (admin tinacee)... I dunno... food, cooking tips, accompaniments. Friends and Administrators only.


Rules and Regulations...

This is a blog that is to be used by a bunch of friends who want to get together to share stories, ideas, and have a friendly chat. The key word here is 'friendly'. So our rules are pretty simple.

1. We ask that you keep your comments friendly and respectful. Differing opinions are acceptable, however 'flaming' or 'trolling' is not. If you don't like someone or some subject matter that presents on this blog you are welcome to take your opinion to your own blog, but please don't do this here. We will not tolerate disrespectful behaviour.

2. No X-rated sexual discussions will be allowed. We don't want to discriminate against anyone, and therefore there may be children present in these rooms. Open discussion on a range of subjects is encouraged, however there is no need for anything of a sexually graphic nature. There are some things that should remain private, and we ask that you keep that in mind when chatting. In the same respect, advocating violence towards any other member, individual or group (whether a part of The Chat Room or not) will not be tolerated. We ask that you demonstrate a respectful attitude about these subjects when chatting in any of our rooms.

3. On occasion, swearing may be present on our blog. Monitoring and banning swearing would be very time-consuming and unrealistic, considering that it is used quite often in everyday discussion. So, this is acceptable, providing the swearing is not aimed at anyone in a derogative manner. For example... "Shit, that sucks," is acceptable... however, "You are a dickhead," is not. Please use discretion along these lines too.

4. Those who wish to be considered for 'Friend' membership must have their own WhitePage blog. When you apply, The Chat Room administrators will look at your blog and use the content to help make a decision on whether to accept your application. In the event that there is not much content on your blog, administrators may ask the applicant to fill in a short questionaire to provide a bit more background information on themself. We also ask that you update your profile and enter your real age. This will not impact on your application as we will not discriminate against any applicant because of age... it is simply to help administrators to make a more informed decision.

4. No spamming please. We want a space to chat amongst ourselves in a relaxed manner, without having to feel that we're buying something. Feel free to discuss work, offer opinions and advice, but we do not want our blog used as a means for spammers to advertise their wares. This will warrant a warning and possible expulsion of the blog.

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Administrators reserve the right to reject any claim for 'Friend' membership. We also reserve the right to ban any 'Friend' who has broken the rules of The Chat Room. Furthermore, administrators reserve the right to add any offending user to the Banned IP's list.

Thank you, and welcome. Choose the room you'd like to visit from the list in the left-hand column. Please report any problems you experience to the Suggestion Box.

Timendi causa est nescire - Ignorance is the cause of fear.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca - Roman stoic philosopher.

Old Bangladeshi Man

Bhutan Monastery

Sikkim Devotions, NW India

Sikkim Spice Seller

We spent three years in Africa; a place that really gets into your blood.  Its life in the raw and its gritty.  But its also rich and rewarding and a place that always calls you back.

Sexy Simbas.  Prelude to lions "getting it on".

Baringo Boma.  A village in the Baringo district of western Kenya where reforestation efforts were being undertaken by the UN FAO and Australia to reverse the effects of overgrazing by goats.  Changing Australian policies meant that it was unable to complete the effort.

Baringo Dust. Dust blows across the plain after goat overgrazing.

African Mother.  Separating grain from husks, this woman in Tanzania must also care for her child.  Women are expected to carry a disproportinate load in Africa.

Africa's backbone. 

Tanzanian pounder.  Each mine worker sells on his days efforts to the next stage of production.  The miner sells the raw earth onto the pounder, who then sells it onto those who refine it further to extract the precious metals.  At the end of the day, those in the mining industry visit prostitutes attracted to the area and HIV rates are in the 80-90%.  The sobering thought about this image is that its unlikely that any of the people shown will still be alive and their deaths would have been miserable. 

"You rode the backs of the environmentalists to get a seat in parliament, then you stabbed the same people in the back and jumped on the coat-tails of big business.

Shame on you Peter Garrett. Personally, if I had compromised my beliefs the way you have yours, I wouldn't be able to live with myself. I think I'll recycle all my Midnight Oil albums now.

You really make me sick Peter. Words cannot describe the shame I feel for supporting you."

MO: 29 Aug 2008 12:59:51pm

Gryphonn: 29 Aug 2008 1:10:41pm

'The good of all'.
"Does that mean that long term environmental damage caused by storage of waste from uranium mining is for 'the good of all'?

So many people are claiming that uranium mining is a safe practice, when we know that it is a dangerous practice and the end product (nuclear waste from reactors) cannot be stored safely for future generations.

Why do people look at today instead of the future of this planet? I'm yet to hear anything from the environment minister promoting wind/solar/hotrock/solarthermal, or other energy sources.
'The good of all' should encompass present and future don't you think?"

MO: 29 Aug 2008 1:35:11pm

"G, I suppose you also oppose the radio active waste storage facility mooted for NT or SA. ?

Much better to have it stored in our warehouses and basements in the cities!

Garret is practicing pragmatism - look it up."

Gryphonn: 29 Aug 2008 2:17:50pm

ravensclaw: 29 Aug 2008 1:19:43pm

Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa by Peter Godwin is a story of a boy becoming a young man in the middle of civil war. Below is the fragment of his conversation with Ramona Koval where he discovers the true past of his father:  Peter Godwin: It is one of those things where it all makes sense in retrospect, but what happened was that after this incident where he had this heart attack he actually recovered. He then hammered up this old sepia print on the wall, a framed picture on the wall of our sitting room, and when I had a look it was of three people I didn't recognise; a kind of young middle-aged couple and a little girl of about 11. It turned out that they were in fact his parents and his sister and that the secret that he was concealing was that, far from being this sort of pucker Brit that he was actually a Polish Jew and that his family had perished in the Holocaust. He had survived really quite by chance, that his father had decided...his father was a great admirer of Churchill and decided that...my father's family lived, by the way, in Warsaw in Poland, and they decided that English was going to be the language of international commerce in the future and that Dad would spend a summer at a kind of language crammer on the Sussex coast of England.

So off he went to do that and it was the summer of 1939 and my father was about 14, and on the 1st of September Hitler invaded Poland and Dad never got back and his family never got out. My father joined the Free Polish Army ultimately and had a very active war fighting after D-day up through Normandy and everything but ultimately never getting back to Poland, which was obviously occupied by the Soviets. We later discovered that his mother and sister had died in Treblinka concentration camp and his father died shortly after the war. When he met my mother, she was from a very posh Anglo family from I think four generations of Church of England vicars, including the chaplain general of the fleet at one point. Her family was sort of appalled that she'd taken up with this Jew, and so she was ostracised and disinherited, and that was what persuaded them just to leave and go to Africa to try and get a new life.

Dear diary.  I’ve neglected you, so I need a damned good thrashing.  But there has been a bit on and one has to be in the right frame of mind.  So here’s the rub.  The strategy was simple.  Off Moreton, onto the ferry, a quick left turn at Brissy and then cruise down the east coast looking for a new life.  But things don’t always go to book.  In Brissy our intended two days stay turned into six months.  Luckily for us our good friends CT and John had a place to put us up for an extended stay.  A spot of bother with the son’s partners meant an extended stay cutting out, assembling and delivering kitchens.  The bride went back to the public service to keep the money rolling in and the roof over our heads.  The men attacked the kitchens.  Must admit that some of the early ones were a bit dodgy (actually, very dodgy) but by the end of it, I became a pretty dab hand at throwing together a kitchen.  You learn what a tough industry the building game is, particularly the finance side of it.  No-one pays anyone and one lot of money goes to pay someone else’s bill.  You learn very quickly not to become someone else’s overdraft facility.  Unfortunately, it took a while for us to learn that lesson.  As with all crises you see the worst and best.  Like the guy who insisted on que jumping and then taking off to Europe for an extended holiday with an outstanding bill we were relying on.  On the other side there were a couple of exceptional paint and granite people who stood by us way beyond what was reasonable.  So a big thank you to them.  It was a good bonding experience with the boy – I guess.  Working 7 days a week often from 7 am to 11pm and up again at 6 taxes any relationship, but we did pretty well.  One guy kept saying that we were learning 10 years business lessons in 6 months, to which I retorted they weren’t lessons I wished to learn.  They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, but I’m feeling decidedly punch drunk by now and I’m sure there has been brain damage inflicted in there somewhere.  But all’s well that sort of ends well.  One thing I do know though is that I’ll never be a small businessman in the building game!  Never again!  The field is all yours Richard Branson II.

At the end of it all, a reward was in order, so we toured up to Noosa, Hervey Bay and Bundaberg, before returning via the inland route of Kingaroy and Toowoomba.  We planned to be as free as a bird to blow away the past six months, but there is a lot of truth in the old 6P adage (Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance).  We thought we’d drop in on a friend now living in Hervey Bay and we gave her a bell when we got there.  We discovered we’d passed her on the road as she’d popped down to Gympie for the weekend.  But spontaneity has its rewards as well.  Going for an early morning walk on the Hervey Bay jetty we said gidday to a couple we were passing only to be grabbed by the bride’s niece and boyfriend who were doing a road trip round OZ.

Back to Brissy, we jumped on a plane for Canberra.  We weren’t taking a chance of hanging around. We were gone.  After a couple of days it was off to a Katoomba wedding.  As dad (i.e. me) was paying the accommodation for 5 of us we thought something modest but nice was called for.  Unfortunately an inn nowadays may sound sort of rustic and romantic but in Katoomba it means a busy, seedy, old pub and Friday and is not the time to be staying above the public bar courtyard.  And no mirrors!  I thought Mirrors were things you gave a quick admiring glance into to check out the pecs or zits as you sped by.  Apparently not when a 20 year old is getting ready for a wedding!  What do you want for $80 a night and all in together? 

Back to plan A.   We took off up the coast on the original trip but his time in reverse (there was no way we were going to Brissy to restart our jaunt down the coast), so starting at the bottom we worked our way up.  We decided somewhere between Gosford and Port Macquarie would be the go.  But everywhere had something one of us didn’t like.  Too flat, too closed in, too far inland, too seedy.  Gosford was definitely out – too sinful.  As we waited in a motel reception, I got a hefty dig in the ribs.  My attention was drawn to the couple in front of us checking in, all dressed up in their Melbourne Cup office party finery and shock, horror, no luggage.  We were onto them in a flash.  Post races gallops it seems.

Eventually, we decided Port Macquarie was the place for us.  Not too big, nor small.  It had everything we wanted, so headed back to Canberra to grab our stuff, party at the youngest’s 21^st and head back to Port for phase 2 of our sea change.  But again the plans were dashed.  On Thursday the boss got a call for an interview on Friday for a job starting on Monday.  She got the job of course and jetted at considerable expense up on the Sunday, with me following on Tuesday.  And the rest, they say, is history.

Un chasseur sachant chasser sans son chien est un bon chasseur.

This is a French tongue twister which means:

A hunter who can hunt without his dog is a good hunter.

"Friends of the Earth spokesman Nic Rau said Shell’s decision was especially hard to take since it came just two days after Shell posted a 25 per cent rise in first-quarter profit to a record $9.1 billion on the back of soaring crude oil prices.

"We’re very disappointed that Shell, which touts itself as a progressive green company, is . . . leaving a key clean energy project high and dry," said Rau."

"It came just before the consortium signed a contract with a turbine manufacturer - the point at which the companies had to put their money on the table. Shell's move is an economic one, with funds redirected towards potentially more profitable wind schemes in the US.

But the company came under fire from green groups who accused them of leaving the clean energy project "high and dry" while investing in fossil fuel extraction which was wrecking the climate. And on Thursday night the row widened, with opposition parties claiming the UK was in danger of missing green energy targets because of the Government's failure to encourage investment in renewables.

Shadow business secretary Alan Duncan said: "This really is a disaster and it potentially blows a huge hole in Government's already shambolic attempts to hit targets for renewable energy."

"We truly have pushed the boundaries of environmental architecture with this project," Ole Sangill, a partner in turbine specialists Norwin, said of the project. "It is a testament to Bahrain that private developers are investing in sustainability and pioneering design, which is certainly the future of architecture as it shapes the planet in years to come."

"Generally speaking, wind generators have been reserved for more macro-scale operations, but a West Australian inventor "believes he has developed a way to generate electricity for homes using wind power." This residential approach utilizes a modular turbine that is minuscule enough to perch atop nearly any roof without causing too much unsightliness, and can create power for the house to consume as the wind pushes its blades."

Heute ist der Winter in Australien eingekehrt. Canberra Bodenfrost ueber Nacht und in den Blue Mountains Schnee. In Sydney war die Hoechsttemperatur 17 Grad und jetzt sinds 11 Grad, was sich durch den Wind mindestens 10 Grad kaelter anfuehlt. Die Zeit der staendig kalten Haende hat begonnen! Pavlina sitzt schon mit dicker Decke vor dem Fernseher.

Meine Reisevorbereitungen laufen auch auf Hoechsttouren. Hab schon fast alles gebucht. Hab aber auch noch einige Sachen, die ich mir in Sydney ankucken will und die Zeit wird langsam eng. Mein Plan fuer die naechsten Wochen ist voll.

Der Chef macht leider kleine Fortschritte, Ersatz fuer mich zu finden. Jeder, der sich bewirbt, passt ihm nich und die ist nicht gut und der ist nicht der Richtige...

Am Samstag haben die Magpies gegen Essendon (Chefs Favourite Team) gespielt und unnormal hoch gewonnen. Hatte viel Spass mit Anspielungen ueber den Tag verteilt. Und dann war ich immer der boese Collingwood Unterstuetzer. Schlechter Verlierer.

52 Tage noch

Hallo,

hab wieder etwas laenger gebraucht. Schon mehr als ein Monat her seit dem letzten Eintrag...

Bei mir ist alles in Ordnung. Auf Arbeit laeufts echt gut. Mittlerweile ersetze ich den Barrister voll. Er wurde zurueck zum Kellnern geschickt. Ist aber nicht boese. Die letzten 2 Wochen war der Chef in Europa und das bedeutete viel Arbeit (und damit auch viel Geld). Bekomme mittlerweile mehr Lohn und das macht einen grossen Unterschied.

Nach langem Hin-und Herueberlegen habe ich mich jetzt 99%ig entschieden mein 2. Jahr nicht dranzuhaengen und am 20. Juni heimzukommen. Freu mich echt schon.

Hab aber auch einen vollen Plan, was ich noch alles machen will in den naechsten 4 Wochen in Sydney. Am 19. Mai gehts nach Tasmanien, dann Adelaide, mit dem Ghan nach Alice Springs und von dort eine Tour zurueck nach Adelaide, ein paar Tage dort und zum Schluss noch Perth.

Die letzten 2 Tage in Sydney werde ich damit verbringen mein Zeug irgendwie in den Rucksack zu stopfen. Hab heute mein letztes Zeug von Newcastle mit heimgebracht und der Rucksack war prall voll. Problem: 3/4 meines restlichen Zeuges muessen da auch noch irgendwie rein...

Mal sehen, wie ich das mache. Muss aber eh erstmal noch 4 Wochen arbeiten. Morgen geh ich wahrscheinlich ins Opernhaus (ENDLICH!!!). Gab ein Sonderangebot fuer "Schwanensee".

Ansonsten auf meinem Sydney-Plan steht noch: AFL :D, Segeln, ein paar Museen und meine Architekturtour, die ich schon ewig machen wollte.

Jetzt widme ich mich aber voll und ganz meinem Film. Die Guten zeigen die Luftbruecke auf deutsch :) Komissar Rex's Staffel ist leider zu Ende...

Liebe Gruesse

Parabolic trough power plants use a system of curved troughs, which reflect the sun's rays onto a receiver positioned above the trough. As the position of the sun changes, the whole trough tilts so that the focus remains on the receiver. However, if the troughs are positioned parallel to the sun, it does not require adjustment of the mirrors, as the light is simply concentrated on another part of the receiver. So in this way, the trough design takes out the added cost of a tracking system.