From buildings to abstractions

from w
As we are moving files around computers and throwing out one, I've retrieved some old images based on buildings and played around with them. One old computers goes to the tip perhaps as we have a newer hard drive. (now have to find them again)

Farewell at a church

from w
Today we farewelled our minister, the Rev Richard Franklin who is moving to be a chaplain at The Scots School in Albury. There's a sadness about it as he is a very fine thinker who has excellent sermons and keeps up moving gently with the big questions of life. Today was also the birthday of the Uniting Church in Australia - which has been significant in the life of the Australian churches with the amalgamation of Presbyterian, Methodist and Congregational thirty-four years ago. We were in a country parish then, a small wheat-farming community of Hopetoun an our boys were young. A rich wonderful life there. Today we had a splendid lunch too and a cake. Our family were busy as one lad had to hurry away to play football with St Albans by 11.30 and Peceli was driving up to Melbourne to a Fijian church gathering and to meet up with some politically hot matters.

How to make a lemon meringue pie

from w
The task of cooking is shared around in this household of eight of nine people and the teenage boys also learn to cook. Yesterday someone said that my mum - Lin Lay - was such a wonderful cook and she made a good lemon meringue pie when our boys were little. Well, I've never made it so they had to start from scratch by looking up a youtube site. Well, the pie did turn out interesting, tasty, and chewy and everyone had a generous serve. The main cooks were our son George and grandson Andrew aged twelve. We gave them 8 out of 10. But this morning there was no sugar left for our cereal and tea!

Not busy at the moment

from w
Until the computer gets fixed better I'm having a quiet spell the past few days. Lost my data so have a fresh page. Will catch up later. I can open some internet but there are still viruses prowling around it seems. It's the Queen's Birthday weekend too which is a bit quieter - as no one in Australia seems to have any special party for that! - at least no footie for the grandchildren today. They were playing monopoly the other night, an old favourite. Tomorrow is Pentecost so that will be an upbeat church service but I've had a migraine for the first time in my life and realize I shouldn't watch so much TV!

when starting a new page

from w
I picked up a book last week on how to simplify your life, to get rid of the clutter, throw out what's unnecessary, but I didn't bank on a peculiar glitch in the computer - some infection it seems - that wiped out all of My Documents - my writing, my powerpoint presentations, Peceli's sermons, my drawings, my recent photos, emails and email addresses and they couldn't be retrieved. Fortunately a lot of my files are on USB sticks but I am certainly annoyed to have to find some email contacts again. And I'd recently paid CA about $100 for security but, like Santa, someone crawled down a chimney! I have to start afresh with new pages - blank pages - and reactivate all of the programs as needed. Sobosobo! Anyway, here are a few images that started off as someone else's photo of an estuary in the Kimberleys region of West Australia. Okay, Sunday was World Environment Day.

Birthday Party

from w
With three birthdays in the family in one week we decided to make our Fiji Geelong Friendship Club night a bit of a party. The boys made a lovo - an underground oven in the backyard with lots of pork, lamb, chicken, dalo etc. and after two hours took it out. Visitors also brought pots of delicious food so it was a good dinner with about forty guests. There was the usual kava drinking too. A noisy night with children playing but the teenagers were in another room playing with an X box whatever that is.

Geelong Waterfront

from w
We had the coolest May in forty-one years so it wasn't easy to go for a walk some days. However the Geelong Waterfront is still a good place for a stroll even on dull days. The bollards of Geelong's historical past are still standing.