Two very fine restaurants in the space of two nights. The best of the bunch we went to this week.

Wednesday

Restaurant was Pesci's on the pier at Cairns . The girls and l were united in saying it was the best restaurant of the week
1. Entrée: Oysters Kilpatrick. Oysters with bacon and Worcester sauce on the half shell. I'd never had this before, and it was great
2. Yellowfin Tuna on a wasabi mash and Chili jam . The tuna steak was cooked to perfection on the outside, and nicely pink on the inside.
3. Matua 2004 Pinot noir accompanied. Very Nicely.
4. One of the girls had a licorice ice cream for dessert.
5. The other had a chocolate tart
6. I had a sticky date pudding.

Thursday
Started with wine, beer and cheese on a balcony BBQ area over looking the esplanade (the girls needed to finish of the beer, wine and cheese they had bought for the week)
1. Restaurant was two fish (on the pier again), Top class food and service
2. Entree was a dish with baby octopus
3. Main was a seafood risotto with king prawns.
4. For dessert we had espresso martini (vodka. Espresso, butterscotch schnapps) Very very nice

Work continues to be a very mixed thing. The project I was sent away for is fun enough, but it is hard on the ego when you get daily calls on minor problems on home projects. You only hear of things not going smoothly so a distorted picture builds about how things are in the home office. At the moment, my distorted picture is that it is all custard.

I emailed HR to express some of my concerns abort being pulled between the two offices, and my people in the other office not babysitting the projects effectively. I will use wisdom and will wait until I calm down before telling my bosses how it has affected me, or discussing these concerns. With a couple of projects which have not gone smoothly in the last year I kinda need the reassurance of a good performance review (happening before Christmas) to know I am still loved by them.

My friends were incredulous that I would be sent away for a month and would be staying in a unit without a laundry built into it. I have just got on with it rather than complaining but world put my foot down if I ever had to be seconded again. It's one thing to have to live away from your home base, and another to not have basic facilities provided.

The apartment they were in had a full sized fridge/freezer, a four element stove so you can cook proper things, and a different room for the bed to the living area. That's the kind of thing it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect as a replacement for the home I've left behind.

Small offices develop some interesting dynamics compared to large ones. There are about twenty people in the office I'm seconded to, and the hours that they work compared to my home office are very long, and they seem far more stressed than my home office.

As a "for instance", my boss here gets in to the office between 6:30am and 7:00am every day, and thinks nothing much of it.

The guys (all on salaries, and not getting overtime) work on average, a dozen hours overtime a week. To friends outside of engineering this doesn't make sense, as there is, in the health sector, always someone else who can carry a shift if you can't get all you need to do in your allotted time. If I don't do the work, nobody else will be doing it, so you work what hours you have to in order to get things out the door. The guys here take it as time in lieu which is an ok way, but not crash hot if you struggle to get time off to relax.

It is unusual, but a workmate and his drafter up here just did an all-nighter. Has yet to go home to sleep, and wont be going home til after work tonight. That is crazy! If he had to work a very late night yesterday, he shouldn't be here today. It just plain isn't healthy.

Tuesday at work was reasonably uneventful. I had left my office key back in my unit, so when i rocked up to work at 7, expecting my boss to already be there. He'd been and gone to a site visit leaving the office locked. Figuring it couldn't be too long til someone else arrived, I sauntered off to find coffee to while away what i thought would be a short delay. One coffee turned to two as the rest of the office arrived at a more sane hour. I got in at 8 when one of the drafters arrived, but it did give me reason to pause and wonder why on earth I was working so early (even if part of the time I get in early is to type up this and review the night's dozen or so emails)when:
a) I don't get paid for the extra time I'm in at the office (salary, and it is a hard process to get paid overtime approved)
b) Even working long hours there is always far more work than I can get done (global shortage of engineers, clients not paying the supply-demand curve as engineers cut each others throats)

I do love my work, but long and stressful hours aren't tenable long term without something giving (will be starting tomorrow - by jotting down my journal entry on my organiser in free time away from the office and just uploading rather than typing it in at the office)

Anyway, to the more happy end of the day I met up with my friends and heard of their fun on the reef. They'd been scuba diving, took the helicopter ride, and were generally all worn out by the time we hit hte restaurants. I tried to recall where I'd heard of some of the good restaurants being (not one of the ones on the esplanade - somewhere on the pier), but couldn't so we headed for Italian. It was nice. Really good food, accompanied by a shiraz which was far nicer than most of the Shiraz I have tried to date in Australia.

Anyhow - work calls. with sunshine coming up so early in QLD it is hard to sleep in when your body is programmed to wake when light hits it. will endeavour to not come in so early tomorrow

Two of my good friends (sisters) from Brisbane have come up for a week's holiday, and have set themselves up in a unit on the esplanade. They are gourmets, and are the sort of people who make it a habit to know the best restaurants / wines / delicacies to be enjoyed in any given area. They invited me out to dinner Monday night to catch up. We went to Barnacle Bill's, a superb seafood restaurant right on the waterfront. It is one of those restaurants where you won't get a table on any night of the week if you don't book ahead.

I had a superb seafood pasta dish - prawns, scallops on linguini in a cream sauce. It was very good. Drinks on the pier finished the night off really well.

They've penciled in dinner with me every night this week, as they'll be eating out anyway, and know first hand how lonely things can get when you're in a strange city. They were amazed that I couldn't claim back whatever it cost for me to live away from home, and their jaws dropped when I mentioned what the daily living away from home allowance was (didn't quite cover the cost of the main at the restaurant we dined at). Engineering is odd like that.

It was great to have friendly faces I could chat with, and enjoy being with. They're planning a high flying trip - headed on a reef trip guided by marine biologists with a short helicopter ride. Another day has them sea kayaking, another has them on a fishing trip. All aquatic activities. All very classy, and very desirable, but largely pricier than my stomach will bear for one day activities, and higher than I'd allowed for. They are both in the health sector, where RDO's (rostered days off - for the kiwis among you, is an Australian oddity where in addition to your annual leave you get one day a month which you can take off at your leisure) are present, and six week's annual leave is the norm. They suggested that I take a day off to go fishing with them on Thursday. It is very tempting, but the project timeline isn't going to allow for it. They tried to wrangle me into coming to the reef with them on Tuesday saying I could throw a sickie, but I was too chipper when I left work, besides the fact that it's not something I would do to misuse sick leave.

There is an Italian restaurant we'll be headed to Tues night which should be a really nice time out.

On work, I am hitting my head against a brick wall trying to resolve issues with some other parties. Slows down getting real work done when you have to fight over each and every minor detail. All I want to do is get a set of documents which reflects what everyone wants, but doesn't take a dozen iterations to get there. My patience and my time doesn't allow for it.

It has only been since i came on secondment that i have realised the extent to which i need to be near people who are friendly. I had always preferred to share a house with a few others so that there is always someone to chat with or just acknowledge from time to time.

In this city, other than workmates, I know nobody. I am living by myself, and other than work and the unit, there is not much more than the daily phone call to my girlfriend (which is a really bright part of the evening).

I had a good first night at a church a couple of weeks back (mentioned early in this blog), but other than suggesting i come along to a "dinners for eight" night, nobody has mentioned any social events, invited me to coffee, or chatted with me after church. During the week I lack a car to get to small group, and would personally feel awkward going up to a random person and saying "I'd like to join your home group for a fortnight, and by the way could you rock past my hotel and pick me up on the way?"

An older lady chatted to me after the morning service, mostly about people at a church i used to attend, and enquired if I'd signed up for the dinners for eight, but nobody who i met on the first night popped over to see how I was going (mostly being up the front leading the music). It's the paradox of being a newcomer, and the extent to which you need to put yourself out there compared to how much the church needs to look out for newcomers.

In the evening I decided that I really couldn't be bothered going back to that church and being ignored again. Church, for me, is somewhere that you go to worship God with other believers. there may be better reasons to not join one fellowship over another than how they receive you, but speaking as a person who needs to feel welcomed, being accepted warmly does make me more relaxed and free in joining in with the worship.

the evening service saw me at an AOG church on the other side of town. Coming at the building from the carpark, there was not a clear door which appeared to be the entrance, so ended up coming through the side door. The person on the door as a welcomer didn't acknowledge me when i wandered over to see if there was any copies of the newsletter around. I could go on, but the crux of it was that I wasn't made at all welcome or engaged with on any level by the other members of the congregation.

I think that next time I get sent to a distant city, i'll ask the pastors at my own chruch to recommend a church in the other city, and email them in advance to get somebody on the lookout for a newcomer.

Not a personal slight, as these churches probably are as welcoming to everyone else but I will need to do something differently next time, as the level of social interaction has generally been too low, and has been something which has started to get me down. In the past, when between or migrating between churches there has been the constancy of flatmates to keep social interaction levels up, but without that I've found myself foundering.

(addendum: I may need to use taxi chits to get me to places i would normally drive to under normal circumstances, clearing it with the bosses first, so i can get to the likes of toastmasters, bushwalking clubs or otehr general purpose social gatherings. That way i'm joining circles of people whose main raison d'etre is to meet socially for a purpose, as opposed to church where the social aspect is very secondary to the religious reasons for gathering. If I'm free to use the taxi chits in a reasonable manner, it could also get me to midweek bible study groups)

Friday was an intersting day. I managed to get a great deal done on some fronts for work, and on other fronts, I hit obstacle after obstacle. Before coming up I had been assured that other parties would be firm in having their act together, so that we could design what we had to, do it once and do it right.

Yeah right! Should have known better than to have such hope that projects would be run with that much discipline by the various parties.

The people we are working with don't have much sympathy for the construction method we will be using, so aren't allowing for details which would make the cosntruction more smooth and painless for all concerned. I'm not too worried as i will be headed back home in a fortnight, and it will become, once again, somebody else's problem. I can do my best, but beyond getting in to the office at 6am, working to 6pm, and bits of weekends (instead of going to the beach), there is not much i can do to pull the project around.

After work, i headed in to catch my first country concert. I'm still getting used to how country works as a genre, and the sound desk didn't mix the vocals clearly, but on the whole the performers were great. really entertaining. Got some pointers from a lady I was sitting next to as to what to do when i went inland to the atherton tablelands on saturday.

Found out on thursday that a couple of my good friends are coming up next week on holiday. It'll be good to have friendly faces to meet up with, even if only for dinner. they're gourmets so it'll be fun to find a restaurant which shows that i've got a modicum of good taste (although having only been here a fortnight, you can't be expected to assimilate and test all the restaurants in that space).

Our office here, it turns out, has regular coffee runs early in the morning to the local cafe ($1 off coffees before 9am), which is a good tradition, and one which i'm going to see if i can't introduce back into the home office.

Am off to a concert by sara storer tonight - an australian country singer. Not the sort of country singer who sings about her dog dying and her best friend stealing her man, but more a ballad type of singing with a guitar accompaniment. Looking forward to it.

Attempted some christmas shopping last night, was racking my brain to get some stuff which would meet our family rules of engagement for christmas presents, while still being interesting. More ideas are developing. Tehre is still loads of time for international post to get things where they need to be got. at the end, i went home, with nothing bought, but not defeated, as there is a way forward mapped out.

Every now and then there are gnats in life, whose annoyance is disproportionate to their size or importance. I had to deal with one such gnat today, not part of my professional capacity, but someone socially from back home.

A difference of opinion arose as to a certain moral issue (the death penalty). While i don't like it personally, i know that when in certain countries, you respect their law and be very careful, as they are liberal in its use. Part of when in rome, you submit yourself to the roman authorities.

The other chap took umbrage at this, and requested that i not identify myself as christian. effectively questioning my very salvation. while i might socially find the death penalty distasteful for any number of reasons, i would not have put it on the list of salvation issues. i fully acknowledge that its severity makes it a very hard issue to discuss without getting emotional responses from all sides.

I personally think that a life in a small prison cell (I have designed enough of them to know that they are small, spartanly furnished, and that it would not be a pleasant place to spend any length of time) knowing that you will never be free again would be a far worse punishment than death. That is predicated on having your relationship with God resolved, and knowing that you have your salvation assured.

If we want to dispute other countries' (and frankly they are civilised countries) rights to set laws and exercise their sovereignty, the standard way of doing this in the past is to invade and impose our norms. I don't think that is likely to happen any time soon, and frankly i wouldn't support that.

O well. I should have bit my tongue, and not replied to this chap, and avoided the whole messy incident. It's what happens when you swat at a gnat swimming in your soup.

Work is, as ever, fun. Things are getting more settled back home, so i can focus more on the project at hand.

Got in to work a little after 6am, to clear some home office work before the phones started ringing up here. It was successful. Didn't get many calls from the home office, which was good.

Discussed some details which I didn't think were buidlable in their original orientation. Will have to work some tricks to get them to work, but should get there. There are challenges on many fronts in this project. I'm using skills i honed back in NZ, but it is always fun to come up with new solutions to old problems. Each problem has their own details which means that you have to put thought and care into each problem. It will be satisfying to do this on a very short timeline in this project, even more so if it comes off successfully.

There are some details which i know will be problematic , but others have decided that they will take the risk, be big brave boys, and try to do things i've never seen attempted (never attempted for good reasons, mind)

Part of the challenge will lie in working with the information we have to hand, and getting a solution without having to take too much time discussing with other parties exactly why we are doing what we want to do. May be a case of better to ask forgiveness than to ask permission. Time will tell.

Spent a few minutes today on a HP help desk chat program - trying to find out why my organiser would talk to my PC some of the time and not at other times. Had done all the good things which i should have, and in the end found that it was probably having a few other things plugged in to the other USB ports which could have been sending lots of information which could have confused the organiser. will see if it worked. i think i was communing with a help desk person in india - that he was called "Sanjay S" was a giveaway.

Probably a quiet night in tonight. Indian was good last night, but need a little need a little variety in the diet, to say nothing of a little meat.

Will be hoping to finish up the reinforcing for a slab i'm working on tomorrow, then get some fine detailing done for other building elements which would be good.

Hoping i have some more interesting things in tomorrow's posting
   

Apologies for lack of high adventure in the last day or so. Trying to keep two offices fully happy, when they both think that they own your time all the time is not easy or relaxing. I'm weighing up under what conditions I would offer myself for secondment again, and what condition my projects at the home office would need to be in for it to happen smoothly. Home office requests are totally reasonable, but disrupt an otherwise busy schedule almost completely.

I decided that a lack of food in the fridge was a good reason to go shopping for ingredients. Cooking and living alone has different dynamics to cooking for others, or even cooking with others around. There is less pressure to perform, and less pressure to make something of beauty.

To that end i decided to get moderately adventurous and popped in to an asian supermarket on the way home. I wasn't sure what i would be making, but wanted it fast and reasonably healthy.

I found a line of Indian pre-prepared meals (from india even!). In a sealed foil pack so you didn't have to rehydrate or anything like that - just put it in the microwave, heat and add to rice. At $3 a go, it was comparable to the tinned stuff i've seen which are variations on a theme of meat with some sort of tomato paste with or without beans.

I thought i'd give it a go, chose about four of them, paired it with some indian naan bread.

It was surprisingly good. vegetarian, but still very good and not too hot. Will make it a stand-by for when i need a decent meal in a rush when i get back to Brisbane.

will save me on hassles later in the week. Most handy when you have to work late to serve two masters.

PS Am still washing my clothes in the bathroom sink, and have got it down to a fine art. Figure there are better things to spend money on, and if it takes a couple of days to dry, so what?

PPS will make sure that if i get seconded again that i get a place which has laundry service included in the rate. It is pretty pathetic for a businessman who is meant to be travelling on the company expense account to have to use handwashing rather than be extorted by the vending machines at the hotel.

Saturday found me in a better mood than Friday night (I had been thinking that i would need to come in to work on Saturday, to tidy up some loose ends, and I was none too keen to do that). I decided that the amount of work that i needed to get done was small enough to belt out either on Monday morning or Sunday afternoon.

I had the loan of a company car, and was directed that petrol was on the company fuel card, as a perk of the secondment. The weather was a little dicey in terms of a bit of cloud cover, so i decided to head north to the Daintree. It's a world heritage wilderness area north of Cairns. I'd heard a lot about it, but wanted to see how it compared to the hype.

I drove up to Port Douglas, spotted what was meant to be a wet tropics information centre, which turned out to be more of a wildlife sanctuary where you could see all manner of wildlife, not in the wild. It makes sense in that most wildlife isn't really happy to hang round while a hundred rowdy tourists wander through talking loudly. It's a survival instinct. For most of the time since the world was created, loud noises tended to indicate that something was coming which was liable to eat / trample / otherwise kill you.

I decided to give it a miss, driven mostly by the fact that it would cost about $30 or so, and that i was still some distance from the end goal (the actual rainforest rather than an interpretive centre based on it). I drove on to the Daintree Village, which i presumed would be the hub of all things Daintree. It turned out to be a small village, with very little there. I paused, turned round, and carried back to a place where I had seen some river cruises. One of them advertised itself as eco-certified (or similar), and I'd sat next to a woman involved in this scheme on a plane a while ago.
It turned out to cost $22, took about an hour, and during the course of it I learned a lot:
* If you want to see wildlife, go to the Daintree in winter. then the water will be cool, and the crocs will come out of the water to sun themselves on the banks.
* Mangrove plants can process about 90% of the salt in the salt-water. the other 10% is pumped into sacrificial leaves which drop off.
* A large python can eat a pig.
* White lipped tree frogs are quite happy being picked up and looked at by tourists (one was perched under a seat on our boat, and the guide gently placed it on the top of the seat for all to look at - but not touch as their skin is sensitive).
* there is a type of plant (I think it was called "blind your eye mangrove), which has its sap under positive pressure. If you break off a branch, the sap will squirt out. It will seriously blind you - for good!
* During a storm in the mid 90s, the Daintree river had about 2m of rain over three days.
* One of the local mountains has about 10m of rain a year.

Anyhow - at the end of the cruise, i drove to a river crossing where a ferry takes cars across. rather than motoring itself across, the ferry uses a continuous wire loop across the river to pull itself from side to side. Fast, regular service, and only $16 for a return ticket.

I had a look in one of the local information brochures about the area, and was disappointed to see that pretty much all of the walks that were mentioned were guided and on private property. It may have been a function of the type of rainforest that is in that area (letting hordes of japanese tourists loose without guides in an area next to feeding grounds of 5m long crocs is probably not clever). I wouldn't mind paying to go on a long guided walk, but it felt like a nice wilderness area was being turned into a kind of McWilderness experience.

It is snobbish to say that the wilderness should be experienced in one way or another, but it did seem to me to be a sad thing that it was packaged up. It would not be impossible to have some sort of department of conservation type centres where there would be a bit more focus on education, and less on how many crocs your guide can get you close to.

having ranted about that, it was none the less very beautiful. Mangroves are typically thought of as smelly and not that nice to be near. These were very clean, and i could see lots of little fish dipping in and out among the roots. I went on a short walk that was mostly an elevated boardwalk. It was great as it allowed me to get a view of the mangroves from close up without worrying about getting feet wet, crocs etc. it only took about 20 mins, but with the heat and humidity, it was all that could sensibly be done in the middle of the day.

Lunch was fish and chips (hoping it was local, but whatever the case, it tasted very good), I sent my folks a post-card from up at Cape Tribulation, where the paved road stops in QLD.

One thing that really impressed me was how the rainforest came down to the sea level. Literally. There was rainforest thick, then you took a step or two and you were on the beach. No sand dunes. No transition. Very nice. I'm not the type who can laze easily on the beach without some effort (if there are others and there is peer pressure to relax, i can be coerced) so i didn't hang round very long, but did appreciate it a lot.

The drive back was enlivened by a touch of sunstroke or similar caused by too much sun, not enough water, and probably a long hard week preceding. It was only a nasty headache, but made driving a little more challenging. A bit of sunscreen which found its way into the eyes made life fun as well.

Got back to town, headed to bed for a nap, and woke up to catch the rugby in town at a pub(All Blacks playing England). good game - relatively well balanced from what i could judge, but a bit crowded. Took a cab back to the hotel as i didn't feel safe walking the streets alone in the dark. It may sound prejudiced, but there were many people seeming to live on the streets, and a guy by himself, not looking too tough, late on a saturday night, would be an easy target if there was malice.

Sunday I tried to get served coffee in the bar at the hotel, but the bar staff were flat out in the restaurant, so i figured i could wait, and started a book i got for my birthday (a series of thought experiements, examining moral issues). Church was nice. Not too eventful, not too many people. Will return in the evening. Aa quiet day all round. Dropped in to work to synchronise my organiser, and that was about it.

Day four had a good result at work in terms of solving a problem which had been bugging me for a couple of days.

In terms of notable events, it came in the most mundane form after work. I decided that i was going to do some laundry, as the bag was getting a little full. having packed the better part of my wardrobe, it wasn't getting critical in terms of running out of clothes for a while yet though.

There was a guest laundry on the ground floor, and i figured on a dollar or two to operate the washing machine and about the same for the drier. It ended up being $3 for each machine. $6 to get a load of clothes clean and dry rankled with me, and in a classic moment (family members in particular take note) I thought to myself "I'm not paying that much for that". It was partly not having that much coinage with me at the time, and partly what i thought was the motel ripping me off for a pretty basic service.

In the end, in a small personal form of defiance, i washed about a load of clothes in the handbasin in my room, and left it to hang in a small forest of rails around the bathroom. In retrospect it was petty of me, and mostly borne out of frustration at having to change almost every basic living arrangement, and pay usary rates for these living arrangements. the firm pays for the room i'm in, but pretty much everything else is meant to be covered in the linving away from home allowance.

I've yet to figure out what to do, but it was an interesting reference point, in that we all have things which we will readily pay for, and other things where we are very price sensitive.

After work I dropped in to town to start the process of Christmas shopping, and to avoid spending all evening in front of the TV. The waterfront at cairns has been developed very nicely. There are nicely landscaped gardens and many places to have picnics. A credit to the local council.

Most of the shops tailered to the tourist market were open late into the evening. The stereotypical view of what needs to be bought to mark a visit to Australia seems to be cowboy hats, t-shirts, anything with a kangaroo or koala on it, or something made of crocodile leather. From my last visit to Cairns i had something of a rose coloured view of what the markets were like, and had somehow got the impression that it was marginally classier than the tacky tourist havens of the gold coast. On the whole the souvenir shops aren't.

Which raises the more fundamental issue of whether it is possible to have souvenirs which are both memorable and tasteful enough to actually put on display on arrival back home. We will leave that to the philosophers. Tasteful artwork might fit the bill, perhaps.

Most of the souvenirs seemed to be geared to the Japanese or Asian market, where I believe it is customary to give gifts of the same value on return to the mother country. Which leads to shops having packets of a dozen kangaroo shaped, kangaroo leather keyrings for sale, and piles of cheap jewellery and clothing. It all boils down to an underlying need to conform, which we in the west better conceal, but still carry around. I only wish that somehow i could get some moderately priced handcraft which wasn't so kitsch that i know my mother would put it in the back of the pantry rather than on open display (mum, I have yet to get some tasteful and moderately priced handcraft for you as yet).

There were about six stores which would sell me digeridoos of various lengths and wood species, which somewhat surprised me until i thought a little more. If you are in japan and didn't want to brag about your australian holiday, a digeridoo parked in the corner of your lounge will certainly provoke a polite enquiry from your friends as to what manner of thing it is, and surprise at your being a well travelled individual.

Didn't end up buying much, but will have it as a regular routine to get a stroll in the evening as well as gradually filling the Christmas shopping needs.

Back in NZ, every region has its own beer, both the general drinking beers as well as the boutique breweries. Without a great deal of thought, i know of

Tui http://www.tui.co.nz/

Waikato Draughthttp://www.lion-nathan.co.nz/our+brands/beer/new+zealand/mainstream/waikato+draught.htm

Canterbury draught

db (dominion breweries)http://dbbreweries.co.nz/

monteithshttp://www.monteiths.co.nz/

Macs http://macs.co.nz/

mike's mild ale (superb organic beer) http://www.organicbeer.co.nz/

speights (in regular, dark and old)http://speights.co.nz/

and a few others that i didn't think of as well: http://www.realbeer.co.nz/nz_breweries/

There are no breweries in Cairns. none of any description. The nearest brewery (a boutique number) is in Townsville, which is about 4.5 hours drive south. For those back in NZ this would be amazing. Almost every two horse town has their own beer, and some of them have two.

I may have to subsist on beers shipped north from the civilised parts of the country. A minor disappointment, but not insurmountable. Not that the presence of many breweries in an area is the mark of civilisation, as evidenced by Greymouth in NZ.

I have been informed that you can get mango or lychee wine a small distance away from Cairns, but I'm yet to be convinced that such wines are not an abomination unto the Lord. Just because you can make wine out of any fruit, it does not mean that you should.

Monday morning saw me strolling to work a little before 7am (body wakes me up at about 5-30), wearing shorts, short sleeves, and sneakers. I wasn't under-dressed at all in the context of the Cairns office. It was such an event when the office manager was seen wearing long trousers and a shirt with a business collar that people took photos of the event, and emailed it widely.

Everyone laughed when i told them that i seriously expected to get back to Brisbane in four weeks. i'm hoping that they don't extend my stay beyond that, or at least that i get time back in Brisbane to attend social functions I'd accepted in the assumption that the four weeks was relatively firm. Will, in the words of a colleague from NZ, put my foot down with a firm hand and get at least one week in Brisbane before they ship me back to Cairns.

Even at 7am, it was already getting warm, but was not intolerably hot yet.
At lunchtime it was hot.
I walked all of 100m to the Cairns city council cafe to get an iced coffee, and felt the burn of the sun even in that distance. For those back in NZ, it is an order of magnitude hotter in terms of the skin heat than you'd feel on a hot day in Gisbourne in summer. And this isn't the peak of summer yet.

I was roped into joining the office social indoor cricket team. That i had not played cricket of any flavour for at least ten years did not enter their selection criteria. I had a pulse, and the requisite number of limbs, and that was enough. The game started after the sun had gone down, so the temperature was gradually dropping, but even so it was hot work. Loads of fun though. Indoor cricket works by having points deducted for wickets that fall, as well as having points added for scoring runs. Our first three batting pairs (I was one of them) batted with courage, with conviction, and with enthusiasm. Unfortunately, we did not bat with skill, and so had negative 19 runs til our last pair prevented the humiliation of losing with a negative score.
We ended the game with about 21 runs.
The other team had 191 runs.

The other team had some "interesting" looking locals. I'm hoping that they were not too typical of the populus but i have my suspicions.
One of them looked like a biker with a full strength mullet, and a set of handlebar moustaches. He was not wearing it with the least sense of irony. Another was a lady who looked like one mean grandma. Not gentle granny material, but sun weathered, and wizened. Good reason to not spend too much time out in the sun.

Dinner was a simple affair of a massaman curry cooked on an electric frypan. The challenge lay in preparing food on a bench space not much larger than the frypan itself. At least there is air conditioning. Many things can be accepted in the presence of air conditioning.

Tomorrow (tues) will see me tying up the last of the loose ends from Brisbane, and hopefully getting full time onto the projects which i was shipped up for.