Still Hot

It has remained quite warm here for the last few days despite getting to the end of the first month of autumn.  Low 30's each day and quite steamy has been the rule rather than the exception.  Another 31º is expected today.  The ceiling fan remained on "Hi" all last night while we slept.

We haven't caught up with friends John and Margaret for some time.  They get quite involved with family, their eldest daughter has had a brain tumor problem and it is nothing for them to drop everything and head off to help Natalie out from time to time.  John also loves his Rugby League and frequently heads into Brisbane on a Friday for the game.

But we caught up with them yesterday evening.  As usual there was too much to eat and drink and the 12k bike ride this morning was a little more difficult than usual.

I have most of my emails come through to my phone as a backup nowadays.  While we were enjoying our drinks an email came through from Kate asking if we were able to speak via Skype.  We have now put Skype on our phones as well.  Within a few moments we were sitting at our friend's outdoor setting, enjoying nibblies and drinks and chatting with Kate in Saudi Arabia via Skype on Trish's phone.  It was school lunchtime there and Kate was using some of her lunch time to chat with us.  Quite remarkable really.

Excuse the grainy nature of the photo above but when I took the photo with my phone the picture looked perfect to me!

On top of everything else we were without internet again for around 18 hours from Tuesday night to after lunch yesterday.  It took a couple of calls to the ISP to sort it out but we are back online again now.

It is two weeks tomorrow till we take off for our trip to Europe and Saudi Arabia.  Trish has been busy sorting out Euros and Sar (Saudi currency).  Other preparations are all well in hand.

Because of our imminent trip away for 2 months, our internet connections problem has been put on hold.  Our current ISP has given us a 1 month credit so that cuts down the expense while we are away.

All the telephony equipment here on this estate is owned by Telstra (the national carrier).  Whenever there is an internet connection problem my ISP has to liaise with them to make any repairs.  They just use a quick fix.  The most likely cause of the problem according to our ISP is that the wrong codes are being used for the connection.  One guesses if we were to change our ISP to the National Carrier, there is a good possibility our connection problem will go away!

We will sort that out upon our return from Saudi Arabia.

Arj has a new post on his Blog as well:  http://behindthekeyboard.global2.vic.edu.au/2015/03/24/banking-24th-march-2015/