500 Days of Slumber

Two years ago I tackled my first blog post. It was two sentences long. I wrote that I intended to keep an online diary of my retirement years and over the next 50+ days before I retired I would learn what I needed to do, saying it was "just a chance to learn how to blog and play around" until I stopped working. Two things followed.

The first surprised no one who knows me. I didn't have the patience to wait, and two days later I started writing regular posts. Actually, while I still had eight weeks until retirement and was still showing up at the office, I had pretty much already stopped working so I wasn't jumping the gun that much.

The second thing that followed will have completely surprised anyone who knows me - including me. I have stuck with this. Let's just say that in the phrase "fits and starts" I'm usually the "starts" part. I have the type of personality where I start so many things with enthusiasm and determination and then grow bored or lazy or whatever. And yes, I can hear several of you saying "Ah, that explains his first two marriages!"

Anyhow, back to this blogging business, today marks my 500th posting.

You would hardly think enough happens to an old fat retired guy to justify writing about himself 500 times in two years. But in that time, I have written about dozens of places we have visited as we traveled the world; I have posted about moving our house, fixing the toaster and working out on the Wii. Hmmm, as I said, perhaps there isn't enough going on to justify writing so much.

There have certainly been lots of days when I drew a complete blank - couldn't think of anything to post. I would whine to LK, "I can't write about falling down again!" and she would wisely suggest, "Then write about trying to stand up afterwards, dear."

I also know I have some very loyal readers. Well, call it by its name - family pressure. My mother will routinely chide me for not having posted in a couple of days. My mother-in-law Peg will tell one and all that she reads my blog every day and they should, too. Sandy used to write comments that I made her cry, but she stopped when I blogged about that. My Dad will occasionally react to something I wrote, like last week when he said, "Those Australians - I don't know how they get anything done!"

When I did a post about all the Don Kennedy's in the world, I even heard from a couple of guys named Don Kennedy. And once I even had a brush with fame when I posted about watching Groomer Has It and loving the contestant, Jorge. He wrote comments to me - twice in fact - and that was a hoot. (And Jorge, if you still scan for your mentions on the web, thanks for commenting and I hope all is well.)

So there you have it. 500 posts, and for those of you interested in statistics this blog has had more than 11,000 visits from more than 1,200 different people. People (or automated web tools) from 54 countries have visited at least once, but the regulars are almost exclusively from the US, Australia and New Zealand.

Those stats would be pretty disappointing for a commercial web site - and in fact remind me of the stats of some of the commercial web sites I started when I was working. But it's a hoot to know that even an old guy with not a lot to say can ride the edge of this new media and have some fun doing it.

The Optusian War

Don't you love it when a phone company makes a mistake and puts all the blame on you? Or how they only write letters about the problem instead of, oh I don't know, maybe making a phone call or sending a text message?

Or how about when the mistake they've made is to wrongly change your address so you cannot ever, ever, ever receive any of their letters, and they slap you into debt collection because you haven't been answering the letters they've sent to the wrong place?

That's what happened to LK. When we left on our six-month journey around the world, she called Optus, our second-largest phone company, and adjusted her account by having a second phone removed from it. That call only took about half an hour of her life, and listening in to her half of the conversation I was pretty sure they weren't really going to remove the second phone.

I was wrong. They removed the phone, but then they did even more. For no reason at all, they changed her billing address back to an office she hasn't used for several years. And that meant, of course, that none of their bills were ever forwarded to the person monitoring our mail while we traveled. Ditto for their overdue notices, for their warning letters, for their termination of service notice and for their you're-in-debt-collection-hell now letters.

All they had to do was call us on the phone in question, and everything would have been fixed. But that, of course, would be easy and that's not a word in most phone companies' manuals.

Anyhow, while overseas we realized we weren't getting bills and had guessed at what the bills might amount to and sent e-payments. Then we discovered that LK's phone service was disconnected, but decided it could wait to be sorted out when we got back. Once here in Tassie, we called Optus fully expecting we had overpaid and were due a refund. Turns out, we hadn't put in enough and with penalties and late fees and charges for the months they shut off the service, we owed $275.

Did you catch that last bit? They were charging us for the two months AFTER they had disconnected the service. It's entirely possible that if we had not called them looking for a refund, we could have eaten up our entire retirement nest egg on a disconnected phone service without even knowing it.

Anyhow, LK spent about 10 minutes with someone trying to understand what had happened and why we had never received any of the bills or notices. Then the penny - or more precisely the $275 dropped - when the person told her the billing address they had been sent to. "But I haven't been in that building for three or four years!" she said. "There's absolutely no way I would have told you to use that address." And rather quickly she figured out that when they dropped the second account, they had reverted to the older billing address.

She assumed it was human error or computer glitch. I was pretty sure this is the phone company's way of getting back at you for reducing your business with them.

Either way, LK was reaching the sort of frustration levels that can ruin a beautiful Tasmanian morning so I asked her if I could give it a go. In my mind, I knew I had a secret weapon for I had only last month learned the techniques and skills of wearing people down from Super Consumer Advocate Dave. Remembering his mantra of "I want my 5 dollars," I figured I could win as long as I didn't ever flinch in the face of a mega-million corporation that wanted our $275.

I spoke with the person who had answered LK's call and asked for her manager. That was Susan, and I explained what had happened and was put on hold for about 7 minutes. Acknowledging that I may just have a point that they had screwed up, she "happily" offered to cut the penalties and fees they had tacked on, which amounted to about $70.

"That's great," I said, doing my best to channel Bill Clinton at his most persuasive, "but don't you think we should also cut out the charges you've been posting for the time the phone was disconnected?"

I think Susan agreed, but there is something you need to know about Optus. It not only is a phone company, it is a government-owned phone company. (And that government isn't even Australia, but that's a whole other issue altogether.)

So of course I was moved to yet another Optus manager to deal with the second part of my request. This is bureaucracy's great tactic - just wait them out, shuffle them from person-to-person, and eventually they will give up. But these Optusians didn't know I had been trained by Super Consumer Advocate Dave and my tactic was simple - show more perseverance than they and keep telling them you want your money.

Immovable objects, it's time you met an unstoppable force.

Joe was my last contact. He told me Susan had briefed him on the issue (which would explain why I was on hold for about 10 minutes). Joe, needless to say, had not the tiniest grasp of the issue. He tried to convince me that they were generously waiving the penalties. I just kept saying, "But, Joe, since this was all your mistake, I don't want to pay for service during the time you disconnected the phone."

Joe put me on hold several times. Finally he came on and said they were waiving the fees for the period when they were not providing service. The final bill was only $79 and I gave Joe the credit card details to pay it and get the debt collectors off the case.

It's time to picture LK and me standing on our front porch, looking in the sky and waving as we shout, "Thank you, Super Consumer Advocate Dave."

Democracy Inaction

This is a quick primer for my American readers who are undoubtedly confused by the results of Australia's national election on Saturday.

First, don't be embarrassed that you don't know we had our national election this past weekend. Most Americans don't.

Now, if you did know about them, you are probably wondering why we haven't been able to determine who won yet. If you're thinking Bush-Gore, don't. Our inability to determine a winner has nothing to do with hanging chads and corrupt governor brothers. Nope, ours is simply a result of good old-fashioned Westminster style government.

Unlike you Americans, we don't actually elect our head of state. All we vote for is our electorate's representatives and senators in the Parliament. The Parliamentary leader of the party with the majority of seats then becomes the Prime Minister and gets to live in the big house on Sydney Harbor.

The problem with this system, of course, is that it is possible that no single party will actually win a majority of the seats. And that's what is happening here. It's called a "hung Parliament" and in order to actually take control of government, one or the other party will have to get the few independents to agree to support them.

But of course, most of the independents became that because they couldn't stand the major parties. Their feeling about working within the major parties is so strong, these people chose to be almost completely irrelevant members of Parliament rather than have a say in actually influencing government. But not anymore. I think we can expect them to rub the big guys' noses in it for as long as they can stay in the catbird seat.

Here's an analogy to help you Americans understand. It's as if Congress is virtually tied after the next election so Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid need Joe Lieberman to support them. But their prize if he does isn't being Majority Leader, but President. If you watch Fox News, you're probably quite sure that this isn't really the way democracy should work. And I guess we'll find out here soon enough. But frankly it seems to be working in Britain, where the same thing happened only a few months ago.

Our system here makes it a legal requirement that you have to vote. Unfortunately, the lawmakers did not figure out how to make it a legal requirement that the country should be able to make some sense out of all these votes once they're cast.

It doesn't help much when you don't even know the final tallies in the closer races. This is partially because of postal votes, partially because some vote counters in Western Australia apparently are leaving work in the middle of the afternoon even though the seat they are tallying is too close to call, and also because of preferences.

Preferences is something that Americans might like to try. Basically, you get to rank the candidates, and if the one you like doesn't get enough support, your No 2 choice gets part of your vote. Or something like that. I know I am not explaining it well, but that is primarily because I have never found anyone here who can explain it well to me. Anyhow, it means that quite regularly the candidate who got the most votes doesn't win because the second-place person got more preferences.

Now that's democracy in action!

This year all of this is academic for LK and me. You have to reside in your current house for a month before you can vote, and we weren't in the Tasmania house long enough to be able to register. Which is kind of unfortunate because our district is one of the still too close to call seats.

This morning LK and I filed online forms to change our address. It says something about our enlightened government that they have you fill out the form online and forward it to them electronically, but at the end they tell you have to print it out, sign it and mail it to them, too.

Because I have a driver's license, I didn't require any further evidence that I was who I am.

LK, on the other hand, doesn't have a license and she is going to have to provide proof of who she is in person. The good news is that she doesn't have to go to the electoral commission. After all they are still a tad busy trying to figure out what happened last weekend.

Nope, there's a pretty lengthy list of people who can countersign your form and confirm that you had the appropriate documents to prove who you are. Some I understood: a commonwealth or state employee, a sheriff, a justice of the peace, a clerk of the court.

And some - well, I understand it, but I think you Americans should consider this part of your primer on understanding Australian elections. Among the other people who are officially authorized to verify that you can vote in our elections are: a veterinary surgeon, a real estate agent, airline ground staff, managers of a woman's refuge. And, as you would expect, anyone holding a current liquor license.

We will probably know who our next prime minister will be within a week or two. In the meantime, I hope this helps you understand how democracy works down under.

The Home Shopping Network

We've been shopping. And when you've just moved into a new house, shopping isn't for sissies. It's for pros, and quite frankly, amateurs like me had better just get out of the way and let the real shoppers do their thing.

The serious work started Sunday when we bought all of our new kitchen appliances in one fell swoop. We bought a fridge - our second in two weeks. The first one was always a stopgap and destined to be the garage fridge where we keep white wine and beer and all the food LK has left over because she still cooks for 12 even though it's just the pair of us.

After our last refrigerator, I am hooked on fridges with an ice maker and cold water in the door, and LK was happy to go along with my wishes. She wasn't too keen on the energy saving door on the fridge door - where you just reach in and grab a wine or beer without opening the whole door. But LK decided it wasn't all that obvious in black so it was OK.

I also had fallen in love with the look of a stove I had seen in the showroom. Oh, excuse me, they aren't stoves anymore. This is an oven and cook top. It's actually three ovens, I think, or two ovens and a grill, or one oven and a warming oven and a grill or something like that. Since we almost never need the oven for more than one thing, it probably doesn't matter much.

LK and the sales guy did discuss a slightly larger cook top, but I was able to convince her that if she really was cooking a meal that needed 7 burners it was probably time to take everyone out to a restaurant.

Now that I think of it, this was all too easy. I mean the bit about us choosing the appliances that I liked. I can only speculate that around 2am every night, she has been whispering in my ear, "You really, really, really want the Kensington stove and the Samsung fridge." Either that, or after 25 years she has actually trained me to identify items that meet with her approval. But if that were true, she would let me buy my own clothes.

Before we left the store, we ended up adding a hood for the cook top and a dishwasher. "But our dishwasher works pretty well," I said. And I got a look that was half condescension and half pity-the-fool straight out of the Mr T playbook. "Donald, you can't buy all these beautiful black appliances and have an old, white dishwasher in there with them." I didn't really know why that was true, but from the tone of her voice, I knew I shouldn't ask any more questions. Besides, getting two things I wanted may have just been the luckiest shopping streak I've ever had with LK.

Our sales guy was pretty good on giving us discounts, and ended up knocking about 25% off the sticker price for everything. He then spent five minutes trying to get us to give it back to him by buying extended warranties. All told, though, LK was very happy with the results.

"DK, this is significantly below the budget I did," she said. I think this is directly related to the type of thinking that buying something you had no intention to buy is a good deal if it was on sale. But then, what do I know about shopping?

Yesterday the hard shopping work continued with sample day. And this really was one where I stood back and let the expert do her thing. First to FloorWorld, where we had to choose wood floors for the new kitchen. We somehow ended up moving straight to the top of the price range, but I am as much to blame for that as anyone. I really do love this bamboo floor. It's called "Coffee", and it should look fantastic.

So fantastic, in fact, that we have decided to extend it into the dining room. Since that room was probably going to be carpeted, I have a feeling that I won't be hearing too much about how well we are doing versus the budget on the flooring side.

We also needed to get some carpet samples for the family room. It was while shopping for the carpet that LK really showcased her skills as a shopper. There was a whole wall and a bit more with carpet samples. LK looked around and moved to one section in the middle. "I think this would be perfect," she said.

While she was comparing light brown with tan with slightly lighter brown, I compared prices. As you would expect, without even looking at the tags, my darling had chosen the most expensive carpets in the joint. Her instincts really are awesome.

We trudged out of FloorWorld with arms full of carpet and flooring samples. We later left the windows treatment store with samples, and of course, we had about 4 dozen color cards from the paint store.

It was at the paint store that I realized that I am not cut out for this sort of work. I really cannot see the difference between the close colors. And about the only thing I did enjoy was discovering that one of the most popular shades of white is called "Hog Bristle". It is hard to imagine most women I know telling their friends, "Oh yes, Hog Bristle was just the look we wanted for our lounge room." As you can tell, my mind was wandering.

Anyhow, we got it all home and brought all the samples to the room. "I'll leave you to it, then," I told LK. She looked quite hurt. "Aren't you going to help me make the decision?" she asked.

"Well, actually, you'll make a much better decision than I will," I said, "but even more, if you don't like my ideas you won't use them anyway."

"Well, yes, that's true," she said, "but I still want you to be part of the process."

I stayed. And her choices are going to look great.

The Neighborhood

We're certainly nowhere the finish line, but life here is starting to feel a lot more normal. In fact, I've been so focused on the boxes and the tradesmen and all the things we plan to do that I haven't really posted much about this place we've moved to. Let me fix that today.

Many of our mornings are spectacular, and today was one of the best. We had a brilliant, rosy sunrise, and that picture is the view from our front window. That's the beach part of Kingston Beach on the left and Hobart is just a little further down river.

Depending on which window you look out of, you either see Kingston Beach or Blackmans Bay and the Pacific. That perspective in the picture is east-northeast, and sunrises are really nice because Kingston Beach lights up just a tad before the view we get looking out the back windows at Blackmans Bay, and we can track the light moving across the water.

And this is a shot of Blackmans Bay from our deck. I took it about seven hours after that first shot. A rain cloud had come through, really pelting us, but right in the middle of it the sun started shining brightly. The whole storm lasted about half an hour. We're getting used to being able to watch a shower to the north and bright sun to the south. Soon we should even be good at figuring out which is coming our way.

These views, needless to say, are pretty much what made us fall in love with this house when we first looked at it about six years ago.

We are very close to what you can fairly call "settled in" by now. Every room is at least somewhat usable, and the chief rooms - kitchen, living room, bedroom - are all pretty much where we will leave them until we have the painters and flooring people in. We have been quite surprised at the size of the rooms. Now that we have moved our stuff in, they are bigger and roomier than we thought they would be.

Last night LK said it was really starting to feel like home, and I agree. I have even made some new friends. Nearly every morning, about 20 pretty little birds fly madly around the garden just below the window where I usually sit. They are black and white, with bright yellow wing tips. They are New Holland Honeyeaters, and they are great fun to watch because they cannot seem to sit still for more than three seconds. They didn't come by this morning and I have grown so used to watching them that I was a little disappointed. (By the way, I did not take that picture, but downloaded it instead.)

As for the big question that we kept hearing when we announced we were moving here.

Yes, it is colder here than in Sydney (though not as bad as Sydney was in the few days we were there in the beginning of the month). However, it isn't THAT cold - and in fact our family and friends in the US probably laugh at the thought that some people think it's cold when the temperature never even gets to freezing in the middle of the winter.

LK and I grew up in places that had real differences in the seasons, with a cold winter and warm summer and half-and-half spring and autumn in between. We both missed those seasonal changes, and it was one of the reasons Tassie seemed so inviting to us. Sure there will be colder months, but that has its own appeal.

Besides, all you need to do to stay warm is to throw on more clothing. Part of the pleasure of the cold is getting warm. I certainly haven't had a day yet when I didn't throw on a sweatshirt, and I like nothing more than turning the heat up to warm the kitchen while making the first pot of coffee.

But it really isn't all that cold. Even though the temperature has been about 7C (45F) around 8:30 each morning, I've watched three or four of the neighborhood kids walking to school with just short-sleeve shirts. A couple of them are even wearing shorts.

I may just be a wuss about the cold, but I suspect these Tasmanians are incredibly hardy souls. It should be fun to get to know them as we live our life here.

Learning on the Go

Much to my surprise, I am discovering that the Internet can be useful. Sure, playing poker and writing a blog are fun but you can't really call them useful. I am sure that there are some who consider porn and chain letters lying about Obama as pretty useful in their own way, too. But they're really not.

No, what I am finding useful this week is the treasure trove of old user manuals and product guides you can find on the Internet. There's lot of things in this house that we have never dealt with before, and we really had no idea how to use them properly.

Take, for example, the electric panel heaters, which we have throughout the house. They look simple enough to run - turn on the power and set the thermostat - but I thought I had better read up on them just to make sure. Also, with everything we've heard about the high cost of electric heat, I didn't want to mistakenly run up a $20,000 electricity bill this month.

It turns out our particular brand are Norwegian in origin, and they're among the most efficient and least expensive to run. But of course you'd expect the brochure to say stuff like that. What I did find instructive, however, was their user guide.

The title was in English and Russian, which probably says something about the markets for Norwegian manufacturers. The rest of the brochure was pictures. Apparently there were 11 things users needed to know. Unfortunately, only the final four made it to the download on their site. And now that I write that, I realize I have assumed I saw the final four. For all I know, there may have been 250 things you needed to know and they just happened to scan one page.

Regardless, that one page proved to be a little less instructive than, say, real words telling you what to do.

OK, I can understand #9 where they suggest you keep your furniture a couple of inches away from the heater. I may have even figured that out without a picture.

But #10 really puzzles me. Do they mean you shouldn't put the panel heater in a car? Given that cars come with their own heaters, I don't know why anyone would even think of doing that. Or perhaps they were suggesting that the panel won't fit into that space between the car and the garage door. Surely, if they were trying to tell you not to put a device with a heating element in a closed room with gas (petrol) fumes, they would have come up with a much clearer picture. I would think. But then again, the few Norwegians I have known did have odd senses of humor.

One thing I do know, though, is how to test the level of gas in our LPG tanks. This was one I couldn't find on the Internet. And to be honest, I don't think I am willing to trust an Internet source to tell me anything about testing gas.

So I went the old-tech route and called up the help people at the energy company. The guy was helpful and told me about the Boiling Water Method. What I have to do is boil a kettle of water and take it out to the gas cylinders. I then have to pour the boiling water over the cylinders from the top down. Then I have to touch the base and slowly bring my hand to the top while rubbing the cylinder.

At this point, all I am hearing in my mind is Ricky Gervais asking, "Are you having a go? Are you having a go?" I can even imagine one of those candid camera clone shows hiding next door to film this idiot giving the gas cylinders a hot bath and a slow massage from the bottom up.

But he assured me that this was a tried and true method to figure out how much gas is left in the cylinder. Apparently, when the cylinder is cold to the touch, that's where the gas is. When it's warm, that's where it's empty. Or maybe it's the other way around, but either way you find out how much of the cylinder still has gas in it.

Given that the option appears to be having hot water stop suddenly in the middle of a shower, I guess I will give it a try tomorrow. But I can tell you now, I'm going to be looking around to see if there are any hidden cameras in the bushes.

Plumb Wrong

Monday was the day to tackle all those bits and bobs that had made it on our To-Do list. It was a long list, but most of it was just people and companies that needed to know our new address. Almost all of these were routine, quick calls or online entries; a few were pleasant surprises - our insurances (health and home) are actually a couple of bucks cheaper by living here instead of Sydney.

There was one item on the to-do list, though, that required getting a trades person in.

I should preface this by noting that Tasmania is fiercely conscious of the environment. I noted pretty quickly that most people prefer to let their clothes dry on the line using wind and sun, rather than in a dryer using electricity and creating carbon emissions. However, having spent her late teen years growing up in a town that has actually banned clothes lines, LK is adamant that it's tumble dry or nothing.

I had already surprised myself by setting up the washing machine, but we needed to get a plumber/gas-fitter in to modify our clothes dryer from natural gas that we had in Sydney to the LPG that we are using here. It took three calls as the first two plumbers said they were flat out and wouldn't be able to stop by for four or five weeks.

My third call went better, and the plumber said he'd be over in the afternoon. This did make me wonder how good he was when some guys are booked full for weeks ahead and he has spare time right now. No matter, the thought of having to go to a laundromat was far worse than whatever mistakes he might make, I thought. And besides, I had just called and moved the home-and-contents insurance to cover this house.

As it turned out, he was a really nice guy and seemed to know what he was doing. This became especially obvious when he got behind the dryer and stared for a few seconds before saying, "This isn't a gas dryer. It's electric. What made you think it was gas?"

There are moments in your life where you cannot really think of an answer that won't make you look dumber than you already are, and this was one of them. So, with my brain racing to find any sort of reply that would make me look less stupid, I came up with the only answer I could: "I have no idea. I'll have to ask my wife."

I called out to LK who joined us. "LK," I said, "this dryer is electric. What made you think it was gas?"

Of course, all I was doing was passing the hot potato to her rather than answering it myself. And, as you would expect, she knew precisely how to answer it. She thought for just a second or two and then smiled sweetly as she said, "I guess because I'm dumb."

All three of us had a good laugh.

The plumber did look at our barbecue, which really did need to be converted from natural gas to LPG, so he got a little bit of work from us and didn't seem to mind that the main reason for his trip had been a waste of time. More than that, I was pretty sure he would be dining out on this story about the hapless Yanks through more than a few rounds of beer at the local.

And later that night, LK said something that she's been saying with ever greater frequency lately, "It may have been embarrassing, but at least you got something for your blog."