Sunday 19 December
We slept in this morning after our lovely night out for dinner last night. We had to take Jenny to the airport at 10.30am . We had lined up with Steve next door to use his car to take Jenny because our car doesn't have the security clearance to go right to the door of the airport. Funny huh, that you need prearranged security checks to get your car past the airport building. Anyway, after that we visited Vision City for a few things and went home for lunch and a nap. At 1pm we were going to go to the Airways Hotel for a drink and to have a look around. It was great. There were these two musicians who were incredible. One played the guitar and the other played the saxophone. The guy playing the sax also picked up a long seed pod on occasion and used it like a tamborine. So clever. I want to find a seed pod now and have a go. This little tiny boy wandered up to the band and stood there tapping his feet and occasionally getting down with his while body. Very cute. We left after a drink and went to the yacht club. It is very peaceful on a Sunday afternoon. We sat in the lounge part and had another drink and some chips, I did a book swap (the choices are not good - I have to ask if there is another book exchange around somewhere) as I have no more books
left to read. :( Sad. We went to Harbour city grocery store and got a few bits and pieces and then home to make lobster mornay. I am learning how to cook seafood for Steve and Monique. I am allergic, so have never cooked it. They both loved what I did and I had a plate of cheese and fruit for dinner. Nice.
Monday 20 December
My mission today was to find some herbs to plant in the garden. I spent the first part of the morning doing the washing, cleaning up and ironing. Then I went to the store for some bits and pieces and then to Brian Bell Plant store to check out what they had. Wow, wow, wow..... what gorgeous orchid plants. Steve had commented on Saturday at the botanical gardens that he wanted to collect a few orchids for the verandah so that we could enjoy the flowers, so I bought a gorgeous purple orchid for Steve for Christmas. I have hidden it out on the back verandah and am actively going to keep Steve from going out there this week. He doesn't usually go out the back during the week as he works long hours and chills when he gets home, so here's hoping that we can keep it a secret for the week. I also got a heap of herb, tomato and lettuce seeds, some seed pots and dirt so that I can grow them and put them in the gardens surrounding our house. Eventually I hope to be able to get all my herbs from here instead of buying them. How nice. I planted my basil this morning in the front garden. I have to catch up with Tetkos the gardener to show him so that he doesn't weed it out. He hasn't been around for a week or so. I think he is working at the other end of the
compound. I came home and started cooking chocolate chip muffins for everyone in the head office. It took awhile but I took them out at just after 3pm and they were all gone 15 minutes later. Lovely. I walked back to our house and make another batch of gluten free chocolate chip muffins to keep here for us. Lovely.
This afternoon, Tyler and Robyn came over to play the xbox with Monique. They got on the Sonic game and had a blast. They said they would have to come over again tomorrow because there was no way that the game was beating them. Afterwards I put on a pot of salty water to boil to cook some crabs and prawns for Steve and Monique for dinner. I remember when I was little, Mum cooking some chinese chilli crab and people raved over it. Unfortunately, my cook books have still not arrived (another story to mention shortly) so I didn't have the recipe she used to use to do that for them. Next time. About our stuff still not being here. Steve spent the morning on the phone getting up the people who have our stuff. They are just not cooperating. They have now been paid as Steve phoned the company in Cairns to make sure they were paid, but still can't get our stuff. Hopefully soon. I can't wait to have all my beads and books. I am serving the crab and prawns with some garlic butter and a salad so I will let you know tomorrow how Steve and Monique liked them.
Tuesday 21 December
Well lets just start by saying that I do not know how to cook crab. But I have been googling since and have worked out that I didn't cook it long enough. I always thought that when the shell went red, it was cooked. Not so in crabs apparently. So Steve and Monique had the prawns and then a cheese and tomato and onion toasted sandwich. I went to Vision City this morning to buy ingredients for my new Thai and South East Asia Cookbook. I also had to get some stuff for christmas which I realised is this Saturday. I spent
heaps but my pantry is now stocked for most of the recipes. There is 2 new shops in the Vision City Shopping Centre. A cafe and a chemist. It is looking great. Actually, it is looking like they do in Australia mostly. It is very nice. While I was shopping, Steve phoned to say we had to go down to the transport company and pay a little bit more kena to have all our stuff released. When the Australian company paid the bill, the exchange rate was incorrect according to their records (it probably went into someone's christmas pocket - but thats ok) and they would not deliver our stuff until it was paid. We went and paid it. And while Monique and I were out to lunch with Robyn and her friend at the Holiday Inn, our stuff was delivered. Yeah!!!!!!! Monique and I spend the rest of the afternoon bringing in all the boxes and unpacking them. When Steve finished work, he helped unpack some more. The place is chaos at the moment but it is great to have all our bits and pieces. Maggie (our cleaner) is in tomorrow and I know she is going to have a conniption (is that spelt correctly or even the right word? I don't have a dictionary here). Oh well.
I cooked Chilli and Ginger Fish fillets with mushroom rice for dinner from my new cookbook. I probably should have soaked the shitake mushrooms longer but it was getting late and I had to do something. I think I should get some tinned mushrooms for times like that. Fresh mushrooms here are like hens teeth. Really really hard to find and very expensive. Anyway its all good. And dinner was very tasty. I just remembered. After bringing in all the boxes from outside, Monique and I went up to the pool and just jumped in clothes and all. It was so nice. But when we got back inside and stripped off, out fell my phone from my bra. Dead. Great. I pulled it apart and left it to dry but not a success. Luckily, and hopefully I was able to get the SIM card out and when I buy another phone tomorrow, I'll see if it works.
Wednesday 22 December
Three days until christmas now. I have to go out this morning to get the last bits and pieces for the weekend (mostly alcohol). Robyn picked us up and we drove to Boroko. She said that at this late stage of the week before christmas, it is better to go in a group. We got a heap of meat and alcohol and a new phone to replace my wet one and then came home. Maggie is incredible. We were gone for about an hour and a half and the house looks and smells great. I could definately get used to this. Monique cooked Spag bol for lunch today. Yum. I am sitting here on the floor typing into the laptop and sniffing the incredible aroma of frying garlic and onion. The laptop is on a small coffee table near the tv because the cord for the internet is short and this is the only place to put it and we sit on the floor in the corner to use it. Uncomfortable but ok. The tv is on and we are sort of watching the movie "Four Christmases with Reece Witherspoon. It's an ok movie. I know that I said we got our stuff yesterday and have started unpacking, but did I tell you that there are books. Lots and lots. And my gorgeous painting that my lovely friend Sonja painted. It so feels like our home now. We went for dinner at the Yacht club where I had bangers and mash. Yep. Sausages and mash potato. It was delicious. Simple food is so often the best. On the way home we encountered a large truck that had a container on it. Now after living in Mount Isa for 10 years and driving on the road with the three trailered road trains, you would think that one trailered truck would be ok. But we forgot to take into account the lax road rules. It was swaying all over the road and had its hazzard light flashing. Scary. Anyway, we safety finally moved around it and got home. The flashing of hazzard lights is
a regular occurance here. Often cars have them flashing for no reason that we can see and the nearly always keep driving.
Thursday 23 December
When I woke up this morning, I started making my third attempt at bread. The first two were total disasters, so I followed a recipe exactly and put the dough outside to rise for an hour. I pounded on it some more and after putting it in the cooking tin, put it outside for another half hour to rise again before cooking it. Then it went into the oven to cook. It looked all golden brown on the top when I pulled it out and sounded hollow when I tapped it on th bottom so good. But when I cut into it, it fell apart and didn't quite have the
right consistency. I packed a packet of xanthum gum in one of our boxes before they were collected for transporting but I still haven't found it. Xanthum gum is a great ingredient to add to gluten free flour to get the sticking together effect. I will have to continue unpacking the boxes and find it to attempt my next go at bread. By the end of our time here in PNG, my bread making skills are going to be superb. Hopefully.
I had decided to buy Maggie a christmas present yesterday and was thinking that a kettle and toaster would be great. But when i queried her as to her home and if she had one already, I discovered that she doesn't have electricity in her little one room home. Stupid of me for assuming that she did. I then asked her what she would like for christmas. She wanted a big pot to cook with. So Monique and I went to Vision City to get a pot and a heap of cooking utensils as well as some lamb shanks for our dinner. I have been watching
Jamie Oliver on tv and as I have 5 of his cookbooks, I looked in one of them and found the recipe for Spicy Slow Cooked Lamb Shanks and Creamy Mash Potato. Yum. So I am going to cook that for dinner tonight. Steve Lock n Load is coming to dinner. He lives in the house next door by himself and doesn't cook much, so I figured that a home cooked meal would be something he would enjoy. His wife lives in America with their dog and although they both want her to come and live here with him, she can't leave her dog. So she is there. When we got home from the store getting the bits and pieces, we washed up the pot and utensils and then dried and wrapped them in some lovely christmas paper for Maggie. She was cleaning Mike's house today, so we knocked on his door and gave her the gift. We went back to our house where I put the lamb shanks in the oven to cook for hours, and Monique made a chocolate self saucing pudding for dessert. For some reason, the aircon guys turned up to have a look at our main aircon. It had been freezing up since the maintenance guys had been but I kept turning it off for a time here and there and it was working ok. I don't know who told them to come but here they were. Isn't it funny how when you really need someone to look at something, you can't get them but when all is ok, there they are. So they dismantled the aircon off the wall and took it outside to do whatever (can you tell that I am not an electrical engineer???) and then about an hour later, brought it back in, hooked it up and left. So efficient. I spent the time sorting through my beads. I have so many, stacks in fact. I have been going through them for the last two days, putting the ones I don't really want into bags to give to Maggie. She will either use them or sell them. I think that she will probably use them, because she came over later in the afternoon to say thank you for the pot and to tell us not to trust the aircon guys and stay in the house while they were here, and asked if I had a book or something with instructions on what to do with the beads. Now as you are probably aware, I am a book person. So of course I have books/magazines (about 100 of them) on how to use beads. So I promised her that over the weekend, I would put a couple of them together for her with some fishing line and bits to start. About 4pm, Robyn stuck her head through the verandah door and asked if we wanted to come up to the pool for Thursday afternoon drinks. Who am I to say no to drinks? So we got in our togs and went up with a bottle of wine (and a pineapple fanta for Monique - have I told you about the soft drinks here? They make coke and fanta here and they are good. The coke is much more syrupy but not as gassy and the pineapple fanta is really good. You can't get it in Australia. It is now Monique's drink of choice). Robyn had her two friends Kylie and Jackie there with their and nannys. It was great to see Kylie again (we met her at lunch on Tuesday), and meet Jackie. They are lovely ladies and we spent a couple of hours chatting. Then all the husbands arrived, so I went back to the house and finished up dinner for my Steve and next door Steve. The dinner was fantastic. Yum yum yum. By the time dinner was finished, I was pretty sloshed, so I watched a bit of tv and went to bed. What a great day.
Friday 24 December
Why do I drink? I woke up at 3.30am because I had to have some water. Dehydrated again. And then of course I couldn't sleep again. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Anyway, I'm not going to say that I won't drink again, because that is just lying. I went back to be at 5am and slept through until 8.30am when Steve came back from the office to ask if I had seen his glasses. Yes he had lost them. No I hadn't seen them and yes I was not awake. I got on the internet to my sister Sylvia in Cairns and asked her to call the optometrist in Mt Isa to get Steve's glasses script and then organise a new pair to be sent up asap. In the meanwhile, I had to work out how to get them sent up quickly. Not going to happen. The easiest and fastest way to get anything into PNG is to get someone to bring it in by hand while flying in. As we didn't know anyone coming in from Cairns this was going to be a problem. Luckily Steve went into another fellows office and found his glasses on the chair, and we will continue to organise a second pair to be ready for when we are in Cairns mid next month for a spare pair. Steve did have his safety glasses which have the correct glass in them but they are just funky looking and not something you want to wear all the time (am I being vain on his behalf?) So all sorted and thanks to Sylvia for getting the process started. Other than that, Monique and I spent the morning at home fiddling around. Monique had decided that she wanted to make apple pies for the guards for christmas and made them. Boy is she a good baker. Her apple pies were so yummy. Steve finished work early so we went with Steve Lock n load to the yacht club for lunch and a few drinks before coming home to relax for the evening. I haven't been feeling well lately. The pool up here is quite warm and the bacteria breeds well in it. So I think I have an infected ear and my throat is also becoming flemmy. Yuck. So I may have to try the hospital out next week to get some anti-biotics. Currently I am battling with panadol and ear drops. We'll see. In the afternoon, Mon and I walked down to the guards hut and gave them 2 apple pies each, and then again that night, we wandered down and gave more pies out. They were all very excited to get them. We watched movies and just chilled the rest of the night.
Saturday 25 December
Christmas Day. I woke early with a headache and earache, which woke Steve, so we got up. Steve couldn't wait for Mon to wake up so he did it by saying that Santa had come and taken all the presents away. She got up so fast her eyes were still closed for about 10 minutes afterwards. So funny. So we opened the presents. Steve and I had got Mon a laptop for Christmas so that she would have one to take to school next year. Tiarna had bought her 3 SIM City game thingys. So for the rest of the day Monique played on her new computer. We cut some lovely ham and fryed it and cooked a mediterrain scrambled eggs to go with it (olives, feta cheese etc added to the eggs) and ate out on the verandah to get out of the aircon for awhile. It was really lovely. Steve really liked his orchid that we had kept hidden on the verandah all week. Robyn had given us three more from her place as they had
been quite neglected. So we have the start of a lovely collection. Very nice. After breakfast, I took some panadol and went back to bed to hopefully sleep some of the sore head and ears off. I woke just before 11am and was feeling much better. I cut up some fruit, made a salad and cut some more ham and we headed up to the pool with a bottle of champagne and some beers, softdrink and scotch to have a chrissy lunch. Steve lock n load joined us as he is on his own this christmas. It was lovely. We stayed for about 2 and a half hours before coming back to the house so that Steve could set up his faceting machine. He is anxious to get back into cutting stones. He was so excited as he was pulling out all his stones to see what he had again. Isn't it funny how when you move and it's like getting new parcels while opening up and unpacking. So he spent the rest of the afternoon in the third room
playing with his machine and rocks. And is as happy as a pig in shit (don't you love that saying?). Monique was still on her computer playing SIMS. I read for the afternoon as that is my thing. It is quite cool today with a heap of rain and thunder around. Very nice. The little kitten came out while we were having lunch up at the pool so I threw some ham out for him/her to eat. He/She is getting more used to us because he/she came right up to the table. I don't know if I mentioned in an earlier section or not, but Robyn was saying that a lot of the cats and dogs here have AIDS, so I am not so anxious to make the cat into a pet. I am definately happy to feed it though as I think it must have a hard life. We are heading up to the pool area again for dinner tonight. Robyn and Ian have invited a heap of their friends to have a bbq, and have invited us to join them. We need to meet new people so we will go up for a few hours. It's been a good day so far.
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