Friday 20 November 2015

Oceania has ALWAYS been at war with Eastasia!

Hi everyone,

Sorry I haven't posted in a full week.  The simple truth is that about this time last week I started having all sorts of gastrointestinal woe.  For a couple of days I was struggling to retain any nutrients from food at all, and sleeping very badly, so I was tired all the time and really not able to focus my mind on blogging at all.

Last weekend I'd said I'd go to Flinders to cut the thistles there by hand.  I can tell you the trip down in the truck with an unhappy stomach (among other body parts) was no pleasure.  I'm sad to say that I was only able to cut about a third of the paddock before I had to throw in the towel: the simple truth is I felt utterly exhausted and sick.


The Sunday of the weekend wasn't great fun either.  The old boy wanted to take back a skeletal trailer down there he says he wants to do up, as well as some other bits of scrap metal he thinks he may want.  One of the piles of scrap he wanted sorted was one I know I've shifted three or four times before and said so fairly wearily.  This prompted a shouted argument that probably went too far on both sides.  I was angry with myself afterwards for failing to have the self control to just keep my mouth shut.


The week at work has been rather 'samey'.  The Corporation has been served with a subpoena for various documents in a dispute between two of our contractors.  My job for 4 days this week has been to redact about 700 pages of accounting records to remove references to anyone other than the parties, so as not to disclose bank account details, commercial-in-confidence items, matters protected by privacy etc etc.  I can tell you that after a few days of wielding a blacking-out pen, white blocking-out stickers and stickytaping blank paper onto pages to be copied, I began to have a new perspective on Winston Smith's life.  I suspect that after a few weeks working for the Ministry of Truth, most people would have stopped caring at all whether or not Oceania was in fact at war with Eastasia, or whether it had in fact always been at war with Eastasia.


This weekend should be a good one: I'm off to Seymour for the first half of the Road Crash Rescue course.  About five of us from the Tatura unit are going, and the course is being taught by Kris the trainer, who is the guru of road crash extrication.  He's off to a job in the Netherlands shortly, so it's an incredible last opportunity to learn from the master.  It'll be a big couple of weekends - the other half of the boat course next weekend, then the other half of the road crash course after that.  The more I learn about rescue the more addictive it becomes, so I'm kind of in hog-heaven!


These images have not much to do with anything, except that this is an old style first
aid kit we have at the unit, with our long-ago name on it.  I thought it was kind of cool!

Not much more to add for now.  Not sure what sorts of chances to take photos there'll be this weekend but I'll give you updates as best I can.

Hope your weeks are coming to a good close!

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