Brunei and Hong Kong - Bits of Day 1&2

We took off from Wellington in a gale..Arriving at the airport we saw the departures list carrying numerous cancelations all around our destination of Auckland ... But our flight stayed open for us and we were quickly boarded and took off.. The Holiday had started....

 

It was the worst take off I had ever endured .. as soon as we climbed above the surrounding hills of Wellington harbour we hit 3 successive air pockets. Bang bang bang...the woman across the aisle from me  had adopted the 'brace position" they tell you to get into if the plane is to crash .... McD had my hand in a vice like grip that would have made a hardened kiwi farmer handshake pale into insignificance .... 

But we made it to Auckland safe and sound though shaken .... 

 McD had booked us into a motel to rest up and eat a nice evening meal before the main flight to Brunei at 3am the following morning ...

 

12 midnight and we were at the airport all booked in and through customs ... No Alcohol on Brunei Airlines flights ..Nor in the country as they are Muslim..

 

A 10 hour flight to suffer through. While the seats were uncomfortable the airline staff were great and each seat had it's own entertainment centre for your movie and TV choice... 

 

And then we landed in Brunei and the 30+C heat ... Collected our bags and passed through customs ..

"got anything to declare  drugs ??"  Said the customs man 

 

"no" Said we ... 

"do you have any Alchohol??"

"no" Said we ... 

"Off you go then " he says with half a smile 

and that was it !!  

 

We were met outside by our pre-hired guide for our stay, a young Chinese girl who drove us straight to the hotel talking non-stop the whole way to McD ..I was to get to learn quickly that in Brunei the women do not talk to the men ....................... 

 

What Can I say - The hotel was magnificent and comfortable and for a few hours we slept like babies before the first trip out ....  

 

 

 

 

 

 The sequencing went a little astray as far as the pictures here .. .We went out to visit the water villiage (houses on stilts over the river) and boated up the river into the borneo jungle to see the probiscus monkeys and then ate beside the river sampling Brunei delecacies before seeing the lights and the mosques at night .... All on our first day of landing ... Pictures to follow over the next few entries

 

But here ..........

 

 We also took a walk through a park - Just to keep the old man happy :O)  Who ever he was :O)   

 

 (Blurry) Picture below shows our guide and McD getting a foot massage on upright pebbles

 

A Blurry McD Laughs through the pain !!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That night we drove round to see the lights they still had showing from from a festival to celebrate the Sultans Birthday.

 

A mosque looked fantastic lit up and golden ..>Can you believe I took this picture without a tripod !!

 

 

 

 

 

The lights below were chandeliers but the locals called them the angels 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 The lights outside the Sultans Palace fell like rain ...Impossible to capture but an amazing spectacle

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We then visited another Mosque. Prayers were underway with the haunting prayers (I think but maybe from the Koran) being recited from the top of a spinaret across the city... We were to re-vist the mosque in daylight the next day ....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 The gold on the gate and the fence around the Mosque was gold inlay ...  

 

 

 

 

 

Were were very tired by this point but stunned  by the beauty of the place.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 More pictures to follow - Sorry the quality isn't too good ...Throughout this holiday I was plagued by low/no light and rain and visciously vibrating boats .... My Camera  helped where it could ...My stupidity in not carrying my tripod around with me shows in the picture quality .... 

But as McD kept reminding me ...I can't spend the whole holiday viewing it from a camera lens ....................:O)

From This - To This

We are back ...All happened too quickly - But what fun we had ... Have taken a picture or two :O) And as I sort out the blurred/out of focus/WHat was that about/My God do I look like that !!!   type of pictures, The rest I will post with some explanation .... 

 

We've had foods we shouldn't have eaten, walked where it wasn't safe to tread, Had boat rides into the jungle of borneo, had THE most horrific bus rides and like the tavelling fools we are tramped for miles in 35C (95F) +  heat and 90% humidity... 

 

And missing it terribly already :O\ 

 

We went from this and tropical evening heat

 

To this and no heat what so ever ... This was on our morning trip to work ....Never seen so much hail here in Stokes Valley...We had to stop the car due to losing grip on the road and not seeing out of the windscreen ....

 

  

More to follow ...And the Vegetable garden update

 

  

Just call me The Master..With Knobs on

A Snippet from an article in an online newspaper

"Killer manure

And not in a good way. Contaminated manure in Britain has not only killed the vegetables it was meant to nourish, the owners of the allotment plots where it was used cannot replant in the affected soil for a year.

A U.S. company, Dow, is responsible for putting an herbicide on the market, aminopyralid, whose deadly power is strong enough to persevere after having passed through a cows’s digestive system and sat around on a stable floor and in piles for months. It’s killed, damaged, and deformed vegetable crops across Britain, but scientists are not sure if it would be unsafe to eat the veggies. The cows aren’t affected by it, apparently.

The herbicide is useful because it kills weeds without affecting the grass around them. A ban has been called for, but as far as I could research, has not been instituted, though Dow is issuing warnings about the product."

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++





I’ve been 'Googling' a number of topics for Blogs and Newspaper articles to read ..Mostly around the Vegetable gardening but gardening in general as well …. What I’m seeing developing now is a status thing… A self proclaiming status thing … There was once a time when you were just a gardener ….Sometimes you may be referred to as an expert gardener. This was usually for the elder statesmen of gardening who had made it to TV … They looked like experts …They looked like they’d been gardening for 40 years and knew their plants intimately …..







Then came the fashionable gardening that arose some 20+ years back …Distinctions had to be made as the 80s gardener was a yuppie who had gained a diploma in this or that and played around with artificial structuring of the gardens, forcing plants to comply or die … Titles then were professional gardener and amateur gardeners … And people would call them selves 'Amateur Gardeners' as a self proclaiming 'reverse snobbery' kind of tense ..."Oh I'm just an Amater Gardener really"... Oh that’s right – and the professional gardeners now started to talk about plants by their latin name …..Which of course was taken up quickly by the overly keen amateur gardeners as a mark of their gardening prowess……







So I guess that it should be of no surprise that I now read articles and blogs of so called gardeners self proclaiming their status as "Master Gardeners" …. My father was a gardener for well over 40 years .. “ spose they must be clever people” he would say when they ranted on to him with their latin names ….







And this seems to be more and more the mode for Vegetable gardening now that we are being told to “Dig for Victory” again and to reduce your “carbon footprint” and reduce the carbon miles in getting a sprout from soil to kitchen ….Theres a $$ to be made now in helping the uninitiated set up their veggie plot and nothing helps the flow of the $$ than having a good status title like “Master”



Guru gardeners get announced occasionally ..Gardeners with great knowledge and wisdom and authority who uses it to guide others …..at a price of course. Even a Guru has to make their $$Million …………..



The latest article of note actually stated themselves as an "Advanced Master Gardener"!!! They must really be clever … . Just how far can this go I wonder ??



So – just for the record I’m self proclaiming myself as a "Super Duper Advanced Master Black Belt Gardening Expert Guru Expert" …With Nobs on …….



Beat that :O)



Right I’m off to plant my Vicia Faba before McD decides to plant yet more Brassica Oleracea Gemmifera Group :O)

Odd Sods

Has anyone grown or know of a tomato known as Cherokee Purple ??

Whats happened is that in rummaging through cupboards in the laundry (That leads out into the garden) I came across 3 packets of seeds .....Another 3 packets to my collection !!!  We are going to be so overloaded with tomatoes this year :O\  All the more sauces and chutney for us I say :O)  Any good recipes to share ??

Anyway - one of the packets is called Cherokee Purple and is sposed to have originated from that Native American tribe (is that the right word).... They sounds damned nice so will be trying them but just wondered about the advertising blurb ... as you do .... 

 

Of course there must be a hundred plus varieties of tomatoes ... What are everyones favourites ???

 

I've been off sick ....A cold of some sorts but it never really came to anything in the end .. .But my face feels like someones poured cement into my nose and sinuses (do we still have them as grown ups ?)  so my face aches in the mornings and I'm waking up headachy and miserable. I'm also aching especially around my lower back and kidneys  .... And then I've slept...and slept and slept .... 

And Boy am I bored ... I'm fine when I'm well enough to do things ... God knows I have a heap of stuff to get into .. but when I can't even see the writinging on the Monitor properly through Stinginging blurry eyes boredom sets in very quickly ... 

Whinge - Whine - Whinge - Whine ......

A recent A4 envelope from my sister has caused me some interest in my family history tracking again ...It's full of trees and writeups and certificates of the family on my mothers side .... We will never sort it out for my grandmother ...all too messy I think .... I aslo got a letter from a cousin in Portsmouth England which contained some marriage & death certificates on my Mums side .... The strange thing about that one was that there was no letter within it ...Nothing no name etc .... Now we had emailed briefly as to what I was doing etc ... and as we'd not been in touch for some 25-30 years I would have expected something ... Oh Well.....there's nowt as strange as folk........

Back to Grandmother ..... Her Birth Certificate staes her name as Nellie Eason Hodges..Sounds fine we'd originally assumed that the middle name of Eason wasn't hyphenated or anything but was a true middle name .... Death Cert stated her Maiden name was Hodges  ... But then we obtained her marriage certificate (2nd husband). Within that she has listed her father as a Charles Eason ...... !!!!!!  Why ?? Funnily enough I just re-read the certificate and a witness to the marriage was a L. Eason ...... And so on ... then you spend a few weeks scanning through censuses and the like and can't find any firm reference to any of them ........... That she was born out of wedlock is the obvious but then to have the name of her (potentialy) Real father as her middle name seems odd somehow ...... 

She had a rough life my Grandmother .... seems that things weren't quite the best from the start .... She lost her first husband to WW1. He was killed in action. Only 28 years old...... Her second husband was also in the military. The marines... A violent and evil man by all accounts... My Mother cursed him till she died.  I have fond memories of my grandmother, though I saw her only perhaps twice . One memory was of her using a pin to finish off a Players cigarette ...So she could smoke it to the very end. Way past what her fingers could handle .... This was in the street of the terrace house where she lived ... There was another woman there but I don't know who she was ..... The second time was to visit her with my Mum. She was in hospital ... She doted on my sister and I, but as a child of around 8 or 9 I was too shy and uncomfortable when my mum had me sit on the bed beside her .... My memories will always be of the happy old lady we visited ..... Her heartache and misery over the years I can only imagine... 

I wonder If I will  ever find out who my real great grandparents were on this branch of the tree......

 

  

 

A black Hole In Life's Story

Another week gone already !!!

Nothing of interest has happened really ...No really so very little that this past week will never be remembered again from a few weeks time onwards ....A non-week... A black hole in the life story .........

 

Depressing isn't it ........ Well Thursday afternoon wasn't too bad I guess .. A vendor manager shouted me and my manager to lunch at "Monsoon Poon" a delicious Malaysian 'Fusion" restaurant..... And while it started off a little 'stiff' and awkard, a couple of bottles of wine between the three of us plus a couple of ports and some great asian style food broke down the barriers nicely .....I found out that the vendor manager does Karate ... And so the conversation turned to some reminiscing  and me getting tickets to the Nationals Karate tournament this weekend ...... 

The afternoon gone ...As soon as I made it back to work with the boss the phone went and McD was telling me she was on the way over to pick me up .....

 

 

"Ello my Darlin!! :O) " I greeted her as I fell into the car..

"Oh great!!" she replied "Just great" .....

 It certainly wasn't a good ride home though and I was flushed, hot and very car-sick-queasy by we reached home .......

  

The next day I was invited by another 2 vendors to meet them ...It was a friday afternoon.. "why not I told them separately ... I invited one of my team members along to the second meeting held in the "wine loft" no less. A very relaxed and pleasant place it was too .....Some very very nice wines on the offing, I had 3 glasses of sav blanc ... "seresin mirimar" a local wine ...... And we chatted on for a couple of hours. Yet another vendor manager was in the wine bar and she came over and gave me a hug and a pat ... Knowing the problems I'm going through at the moment with work and facing some similar issues with my manager we can only share in our misery at present ..... 

By I came out of the wine bar and said my bye's to my team colleague, McD was ringing and txting wondering where the sam I was .......

"Ello my Darlin!! :O) " I greeted her as I fell into the car..

"Oh great!!" she replied "Just great" .....

A year in my garden #6.....- (plus the rest)...

 

Grumpy Old Farts

I don't know what McDs problem is ... I suggested in the week that we go out to watch a movie ...... "What movie shall we watch"  McD asks - "well there's a movie called "Grow Your Own" about people at a vegetable allotment" says I .... At which point McD runs out of the house screaming and pulling her hair out !!!   .... "Womans finally lost it"  says I...To my self this time........ .I guess she'll return one day  -  when she's ready ........ :O)

So maybe I'm a little too focussed on the garden these past few months .....

 But I'm not alone on that one - Check out the guerrilla gardeners

 

The Vegetable Garden

 

The above is the planned vegetable beds ... Beds 1 and 2 exist now ..Bed 1 is pretty much planted as written - the spaces that are blank have additional celery, spinach etc .... in mid spring I'm hoping to replant for summer crops .... 

Some questions asked on my previous post coincided with McD asking a similar set .... "what are we going to do with all those vegetables " she asks ... And so did Arbi !!   Well I like your positivity :O)  So far we've had a bird attack that decimated the cabbage seedlings ...well the green ones any way - the red ones they do not seem to favour .... A soil dilemma in trusting soil delivered from a reputible "green" composting and soil making company That in this past weeks winter rain has allowed a puddle(!!) Yes a Puddle(!!) to form on the surface near one corner of the 1st raised bed !!!.... And now we have iced cold 130kmh winds with sleet and hail at times slamming into house and garden .... I wonder what will be left ...........  

This was in our toilet !! Big Bertha of a spider it was ...

However, I think you will both eventually be right in that the number of beds we will create will be in excess of what we can actually eat .... BUT .. Does that really matter ?  I'd rather have too much than too little ... The plot of land in question is of little use for anything else ...So why not use it to it's max capability?? There are always the kids, M-in-L, and the neighbours to hand it over to .... Or the compost bin ... and really, secondary to the harvesting is the desire I have to actually do it .... The djd mini-everest ...'I did it because it was there"  "I did it because I could" .......

I can hear McD screaming again ....... 

Looking a little worse for wear from the weather - this cabbage plant has avoided the bird attack .....So far

 Jule asked as to who so many Brussel sprouts .... Well it's that block .. The problem is that even in summer that block will be too shaded due to the wall and fence to the north of it (Remember we are in the southern hemisphere so everythings reversed) ...What will grow happily are the brassicas and like ...such as cabbages, b'sprouts etc .........

Now of course I could very easily fix that with a few cheap frames made up with mirrors in them I have a bank on the west side of no use for anything and could easily angle them in place there to reflect sulight back into the problem border ...... 

But I have to think of McDs mental health ... And I can only image her reaction should I bring the the idea up over lunch tomorrow say .........

So - maybe not so many sprouts to be planted .... But definately will have to be stuff that can tolerate a little less than optimun sunshine on them ......

Jule Also asked about the lack of salad plants - well I'm thinking of putting the lettuces and radishes and some tomatoes etc in containers beside the back door for easy access as it's right beside the kitchen... There will also be tomatoes everywhere as well as I'm trialing a good few varieties this kiwi springtime ..... 

Jule was also mentioned that  that Squash (pumkin) and cucumber can cross polinate .. I'd heared this years ago probably from my father (A gardener by trade for 40 + years)  but in reality it is highly unlikely as they are quite distantly related (My books assure me).  Modern cucumbers are now bred to produce female flowers only !!!! Producing fruit without the need for male flowers ...Though they do produce some male flowers along the way..It's not been totally bred out of them yet ....      

After that It's down to what can we fit in ... This season will be about variety...Trying as many different plants as possible .... This may differ in future years as we decide on prefererred foods or decide to focus on crops we can store longer (such as potatoes, carrots etc ) .... We were to grow corn but it grows very close to us in the fields and it's usually pretty fresh and tasty  when we buy it in.. Though perhaps not as fresh as when you can eat it raw and sweet from the plant... 

Also mentioned were Okra - Not even sure if it would grow in NZ ...I actually like Okra so must read up on it .... and black eyed peas - Something else I'm not sure about ever having grown ... and certainly not cooked with ...Something else to look up ..... 

 

We have very large native worms in NZ ..This type live in the undisturbed clay and reach a up to a foot in length. Other species can be up to 6 feet in length !! But not in my garden :O)   

One thing we are to grow - but probably in the flower garden for digging up later in the year .... Is Jerusalem Artichokes .... Yum .... I love them raw and can remember my father growing some when I was around 9 or 10 .... He couldn't have liked them though as he didn't grow them again after that ..... So - this year almost 40 years later I have a small box of roots to plant... We ate one of them as a reminder to me and something completely new to McD ... They have a yellow flower like a sunflower on them in the summer so will look nice too in the main gardens ...... 

But as I said this weekend it's gales, sleet, hailstones, rain, ........ All slamming into the house un obstructed from the deep south antartic waters ..... 

 

Brrrrrrrrrrrr  

Kitchen Garden, Potager Garden, Raised Beds, vegetable garden.

A year in my garden #5...- (plus the rest)...

General

 

No Gardening this weekend (see below) But I did get a chance to wander around the garden seeing what’s what…That the worst of winter, still to come, doesn’t seem to have registered with the plants as the pictures show – we still have flowers in the garden and those not flowering are getting ready to do so …..EVEN a camellia that had never flowered since we’ve been here, flowered this winter… Small pink flowers lasting barely more than a day ..>I didn’t even get the chance to take a photo ….:O0  

 

This azalia is at the front of the garden .. Now almost in shade the whole day ..

 

Grumpy Old Fart

McD and I work in 'services' professions so tend to be a lot more critical of service we receive in shops, cafe's etc ... But we seem to be spiraling downwards as far as getting reasonable service is concerned ...Shop Staff too busy chatting with friends than serving customers .... McD went into SubWays the other day to have some youngster practically pushing her out of the way as she used a cloth to clean the glass frontage.... To hinder someone trying to buy in a shop !! They have no idea do they .... And to do that to McD - real dumb .............  

 

The garden seat now collecting a covering of moss and lichen on it... I like it as it shows how clean the air is and looks good (to me) ...but will mean a shortened life for the seat itself.

 

Vegetable Garden

 

 

 

Well here is the plan ..The end goal of our vegetable garden.. Of course this doesn’t take into the fact the whole garden is on a slant both north to south and west to east … Plus the fact that the garden is far from rectangular….being narrower at the north end than the south ..Plus the fact that it’s sunken already into the earth with a concrete wall and fence to the north boundary and a clay bank and fence to the west ….

 

 

 

So why are we planting here of all places ???

 

We’ve nowhere else to put it really ……

 

 

 

I’ve already told McD we are to move in two years So I can start it all again – but properly this time :O)  “Oh that will be fun dear” she muttered gratingly through her clenched teeth ………

 

Even in our Winter a climber Rose wants to flower (Note the black spot as we don't spray beside the veggie patch) 

 

The weekend has not been good for gardening …We are now in the grips of winter. It’s cold … Damned cold …Plus we have a 120K gale blowing right off the Antarctic and driving  iced  rain directly at the house ….. And it’s been raining for 24hrs now – Chaos on the roads …And that will just get worse by tomorrow morning …….

 

The white Magnolia prepares to flower

 

It’s effin cold ……..

 

And now we’ve lost Cable connections – which means no internet, TV etc, phones  ……..

 

The Rhododendron prepares to flower

 

 

The only thing I do like it the cool cool clean air that now surrounds us …makes you want to keep on breathing in ………………. 

 

The small flowers of the native Coprosma Robusta will lead to red berries in late spring 

 

So apart from a brisk ½ hour wander about the garden Saturday morning to see what’s what and grab a few photo’s that’s all we’ve done ………Trouble is – we are running out of time to get these raised borders in place……. To complete them all there is a good 8-10 weekends work ahead  ..>depressing isn’t it ….

 

I thought this might be the earliest kowhai flowers this year but found a tree flowering beside the local supermarket....

 

And of course then there’s the rest of the garden to look after ….. Not a hope eh with us going to work in the dark and leaving work in the dark as well ……. So only one thing to do and that was to get a gardener in to keep the rest of the garden going ….. So we hired Jim to come round once a fortnight to weed the yard and front borders…However he is the wrong side of 70 and I'm concerned at his health. I  Just know we are going to come home and find him flat across a border one day having expired from the cold and effort …..

 

the fuscias seem to be happier in the winter shade than the summer sun ...

 

Worse still for all his talk he knows little about the plants we have …. Lilly bulbs we bought at $4-5 a pop left on top of the ground …the same for the Dahlia tubers …All left to the exposure of the recent frosts …… I’ve not looked at them closely but if they all rot now I’m hundreds of dollars out of pocket ……

 

 

 

But still we are too soft to fire him …of course where he has worked is clean and free of weeds … And,  HE might be ME in a few years time ….But at least I will know what to do with bulbs and tubers costing a small fortune …………………………………….

 

 

I hope this means lots of fruit this year ....

Perhaps I read too Much ........................

General

I guess this week was as dark a week as last week really except that the week ended with the days slightly longer than shorter. We did however get to feel a true winter, with cold winds and rain and our first real frost hitting us. North and south of Wellington, across the country snow fell - to the delight of the children or child at hearts but few others... I am not a snow fan ..Love seeing it from afar....Hate living in it......

We're Screwed

I've been listening and reading items on gloal warming and the ever increasing prices for food and the worsening famine around Ethiopia and Sudan ....To see rice fields now being planted with "Bio-Fuel" crops and increased pressure on 3rd world farmers to clear more jungle to survive is sadening and desperate for the world. I read about the logging of the jungle in eastern africa. Bad enough in it's own right, but that they use the rivers to transport the logs ...Many logs are lost to the river. These tree length logs then wash up on the beaches of easten africa and become impassable obstacles for the breeding turtles trying to lay eggs in the sand above the tide line ....They can't do it and so either return to the sea or lay their eggs where they have no chance of hatching. Turtles across the planet face similar pressures and problems ... Humans living beside the beaches such as in the mediterranean ensure the turtles can never again land there .......

Ever thought how good it would have been for your Children, Grandchildren or Great Grandchildren to have been able to see these great turtles, and even for them to have had the opportunity to see them in their own environment ?? It's not going to happen ..................

Isn't there something desperately wrong with us (the world) when we put the need to feed ourselves below everything else .....

The increased pressure on remaining food farmland to produce more and more then leads us to genetic engineering.. The reality is - can we (the world) really survive without it ? I read now that they are developing corn and wheat crops that are resistant to weed killers. Weed killers such as "round-up". It's called Roundup for a very good reason - it's used to kill every plant it comes in contact with .....So there goes the corn fields with poppies etc growing amongst them that I remember when living in England ... I bet that doesn't happen anymore now ... It (weedkiller) also in the UK for example kills plants such as 'fat hen'. So what ? It is the most common plant that feeds the native birds ....Pheasants, sparrows, partriges, my beloved Skylarks, field/wood mice and so on ....Fewer mice, sparrows and we lose more of the birds of prey such as the Kestral.....

Does it matter though that we lose these creatures ?? It does to me...But I'm not starving ... But this food won't get to relieve the famine will it when we are looking to grow more and more Bio fuels for ourselves ....

Of course in the US this genetically modified weed-killer resistant crops won't have quite the same species destruction...why? Because they have a sufficient land mass to reserve huge parkland for the wildlife to exist and squeeze into. So no - not the extinction of species (though it's still happening from other things )... Sure the farmland will be 'Green Concrete' as the paper described it - barren of all other wildlife except for the intended crops growing there...........Most of which will be grown for Bio Fuels anyway.

New Zealand will have the same issues as the UK if it allows GE crops in. We already grow crops for bio fuels...How long before GE cops are here ? Not long ....Not long at all .....