Almost Ready To Pack!

Today is Tuesday and we fly out to the Philippines and Manila on Thursday, just before lunch.  The pool has been cleaned, the filter flushed out, the lawns mowed and the edges 'done'. I've guesstimated which case I should take and am getting my head around what clothes I need and whatever else needs to be packed.

I've tidied up my Samsung tablet and have uninstalled a few things.  I have 'synced' my Firefox browser with my other devices so I can readily access some of the websites I might need to check while away.  I've checked my Foxtel App on the Samsung tablet and have installed my NordVPN.  With this I hope to fool Foxtel into thinking I am in Australia and therefore eligible to watch Aussie sport on their sports channels, despite being overseas.  After all there is an Australia vs India Test Match on while we are away!

I've been to the doctor to sort out my meds and all is ready to head away.  We've been in contact with Peter, the husband to be, who is currently in Manila ensuring preparations are running smoothly for the wedding.  Peter will meet us at the airport.  He also mentioned that every passenger on the flight in (we are on the same flight as he was) was given a free sim card so that should mean we have some phone service when we arrive.

We have used the Messenger App to speak and text between ourselves in Queensland and Peter in Manila.  Messenger is taking over from Skype as the way to remain in contact while gallivanting around the world!

Under cover car parking has been booked in Brisbane for our time away. I've loaded up the Vodafone TV Box with some basic TV series ready to go.  All I will need is access to the hotel room's TV's HDMI ports and we are in business.  Hotel WiFi should be available as well.

Our hotel bookings are all completed and Trish has loaded up the "Travel Card".  I've had a haircut courtesy of Trish.  All seems in readiness

We had a great drinks night on Saturday and it took me a full 24 hours to recover.  I was OK the next morning, just not my sparkling best.  We had to travel around 8k's away this time and our host was kind enough to pick us up so we just needed to 'Uber' home.

This does not augur well for wedding celebrations so some care will need to be taken!  Fortunately the wedding reception is in the same hotel as where we are staying!  I will need to tread carefully at any pre-wedding celebration while in Manila.

So what else have we been up to?  I grabbed a $99 12 month Aldi Sim card for Trish for when we get back.  That gives her unlimited calls for 12 months and a total of 12GB of data.  She isn't a big user of data.  The deal seems pretty reasonable, even if she decides to toss it after 6 months.

We are slowly working our way through the drinks in the Waeco fridge wanting it emptied and cleaned before we leave.

There is a big washing day on today finalizing clothes required for the trip!

So basically, everything has been geared towards our trip away.  But then three nights after we get back home, we are due to fly to Melbourne for Christmas.

Most likely my next Blog post will be from the Philippines and done on the tablet.  The tablet sure isn't as nice to use as the PC but it still works OK.

Next stop, Manila!

Yes, Still Alive & Kicking!

For me my 'work' with the Community Association for 2018 is all but over.  A couple more things to finalize and that will be it. Trish remains flat out with her Association duties and both of us are finding we are beginning to slow down a little needing a few days of R and R just catch up with things.

Our health isn't a hassle with both of us fairly fit and active.  I am splitting my daily exercise between walking and bike riding aiming where possible for either a 4K walk or a 13 or 14k bike ride.  I manage to get into the pool after the walk or ride.  The pool is great but with the bit of topsy-turvy weather up here switching between quite warm to lovely and mild every few days or so.

The pool was 24° this morning but a gorgeous 28° a few days earlier.  If you watched the cricket Saturday night you would have seen the row of that storms swept across SE Queensland.  We got almost 17mls in that lot and another couple of mls the next day along with a drop in temperature from 32° down to a cooler 24° the day after.

So what have we been doing with ourselves?  Trish is working on arranging a series of Markets for the Arts and Crafts Association and I have been playing with my new self bought Christmas present.  I enjoy having a second Android TV box to muck around with.  The one I had was a very basic box which sometimes would connect to the WiFi here at home or sometimes not.  Then there were apps which opened one day but not the next.  Reliable is the one word you wouldn't use to describe it.

Early last year Vodafone entered the android TV box market with their Vodafone TV.  It was priced at a little expensive $120 but was popular with public.  It was built for Australia so came with the right power plug and that sort of thing.  Vodafone promoted it along with their new broadband product they were introducing to the market.  Connect to Vodafone NBN and grab this box for $120 and we'll give a free 6 month subscription to Netflix sort of thing.

They then raised the price to $140 and it became a little too dear.  Suddenly they dropped the price to $72 and at that price it was a bargain.  So Merry Xmas Thommo, I bought one.  And I must say I reckon it is a pretty good item.  There seems to have been a rush on them at that price and there is plenty of chat around internet forums on them.

It is around 1/3 the price of my Nvidia Shield but works much better than that.  I would say around 75%, not as powerful as the Shield and a little slower.  But when up and running it is very similar.  And I can fully control it with my Logitech Smart Hub.

Our other main thought at this stage is around our upcoming trip to Manila, the Philippines and the wedding. We have now booked all of our accommodation which is great.  Trish booked under "Trish Thomas" but when the credit card had "Patricia Thomas" on it the hotel rejected it.  The odd email back and forth soon sorted that out.

The bride and groom are already over there getting ready and we arrive in Manila Thursday week.  It is a place we ordinarily wouldn't have thought of visiting so it should be a lot of fun, especially having people there we 'know' who are available to support us if needed.

You never know, the next blog post may be from the Philippines!

We've Now Been To Fraser Island

 We arrived back home from our three nights at Fraser Island around 3pm Friday afternoon.  I guess if you were working then these three days would have been the perfect time to sit back and just 'chill out'.  It was a great place to just prop and hang.  We are retired now and spend heaps of time propping and hanging so it wasn't really our scene.

The beer wasn't too expensive, the meals were ample though a trifle on the dear side and the Kingfisher Bay Resort was fine.  It was around the same cost per night for our stay at the Golden Sands Hotel in Penang last year.  Given our 'rathers' the Golden Sands would have won by a street. WiFi was virtually non existent at Fraser and the free stuff available around Reception was as slow as.

We didn't bother with the $200 per head tour to the local highlights which I would expect would totally 'make' the three days away.  We'll do it later from the Sunshine Coast with friends at around $180 per person.  But it will be all the way along the beach from Noosa to Rainbow Beach, then a short hop over to Fraser and do the full day bit then.

The photo above was taken from the barge as we travelled across from River Heads near Hervey Bay to the resort itself.

Upon arrival it was unpack, get sorted, check out the room (which was fine) and then the local 'store' for supplies.  6 stubbies of mid strength was $20 and there was a fridge in the room.  Or you could have wandered to the beach bar where it was 4 mid strength stubbies for $24. The 6 for $20 seemed a good deal when you consider where we were.

You could bring some of your own supplies if you wished, that wasn't a hassle.

We sat on our balcony and this was the view, through the trees to the resort pools and what turned out to be the breakfast venue.  Breakfast was included in our deal which was great.  Yes, we made a hog of ourselves at breaky so that a small packet of chips along with a frosty drink for lunch was all we needed.

Our major past time was walking around the resort, out along the jetty where they were fishing, then a walk back to the room.  We did around a couple of k's twice a day and filled in the time OK.  I didn't bother with the pool.  Then there was sitting quietly on our balcony as well.

We had our evening meal at a place called the Sand Bar.  It was like a glorified pub with above average counter meals.  A burger set you back $19, a parma around $24 and a pizza $25.  Trish had some salmon at $28.  You weren't hungry when you finished.  A Fifty Lashes Schooner set me back $9-50.

But we are sure glad we did it but probably would have preferred something with a little more excitement.  We reckon for the money we spent a few nights at the Gold Coast would have been better value.  There is a range of eateries there and plenty of places to sticky beak around and fill in time.

But now we can say we've been to Fraser Island!

Following Meg and Harry

I am not sure we'll get the "Royal Suite" but we are off to Fraser Island this week and staying at the same place as the the Royal Couple!  Trish grabbed a ticket from a "Luxury Escapes" website, three nights accommodation with breakfast included.  We are on the 3:30 pm Tuesday ferry across to the resort and will spend 3 nights there.

We've booked a Fraser Island all day bus tour for one of the days and it had better be nice and sunny! At $150 per head it would want to be a great day out.  You can't go over to the island and not 'do' the tour on this once in a lifetime trip for us.

So this week is pretty well sorted.  As the photo shows I've managed a bottling around a week ago and today I put another brew on and bottle washed.  The bottling should go ahead upon our return from Fraser!

We bit the bullet and one of the guys at Computer Club put a totally new version of Windows 10 Pro install on Trish's 5 year old laptop for her.  I spent most of yesterday (Saturday) putting Office and all the other stuff she wanted back on again.  We managed to re install 95% of the stuff back, luckily it was all the important stuff she needs.  It sure seems to load and shut down a lot more quickly after the reformat.

The weather has sure warmed up the last week or so here with a week of around 30° each day.  Some days were hotter, others a little cooler.  10 days ago the pool was 22° and a bit chilly.  Today it is over 28° and just delightful!  I usually swim a couple of times each day.

Bike riding has now been joined by a daily walk of a couple of kilometres. I'm wanting to get ready for our trip to the Philippines and Manila early in December where we expect to do a lot of walking.  So I thought I would start off with a couple of k's each day and slowly work my way up.  So I do my walk and follow up with a slightly shorter bike ride of around 12k's or so.

After that bit of exercise a swim goes down very well indeed.

On Thursday's walk I just wore my cheap scuffs and managed a blister on a toe on my right foot.  So walking gave way to bottle washing this morning!

Luckily we aren't into the full swing of summer as the ceiling fan in the lounge room just stopped!  I've rigged up a pedestal fan in the short term and it is OK at this time of the year.  Someone is expected to come around and check it out for us.  I guess we'll be up for a new ceiling fan.

There is a Cricket Australia android 'app' which has live TV coverage of the Sheffield Shield matches.  Being Android means it can also be installed on my Nvidia Shield box and I can watch all the matches live and on the big screen  There is also a Cricket Australia addon in Kodi which gives me yet another chance to sit back and enjoy the day's play at the MCG or the like.

So we are both well and enjoying life here on the Sunshine Coast.  The warmer weather now means several jumps in the pool each day.  So mow the lawn, into the pool afterwards.  And then I can always enjoy the odd cool drink or two .... or three!

Online With The NBN

I received an email around 3pm Tuesday afternoon from Telstra advertising all their NBN services and to 'connect now'!  I really don't think that it was the formal notification that my NBN connection had gone live, but I plugged all the bits and pieces in anyway, connected the landline phone to the modem/router and waited.

I noted the 'Connected' light came on almost immediately after I powered the NBN Connection box.  Then another "DSL" light came on.  I then powered up the modem/router and suddenly my PC indicated I was online!

My modem/router is now just used as a router and distributes internet across the house via Ethernet cables or by wifi.

A quick trip to the Speedtest website showed I was getting 47MB as a download speed which is pretty good. I didn't mind the connection being a day earlier than I had been told.

Around 45 minutes later I received a call from Telstra, this time checking that all had gone well when I connected.

We are on a Fibre to the Curb (FTTC) connection while most of our area will be on the standard Fibre to the Node (FTTN).  Many locals continue to wait for their FTTN connection to go live. They have been told to expect connection by November 1.

Has it made a difference to my downloading habit?  The answer is yes by quite a bit but not as much as I had hoped.  There are two limiting factors to downloading, how fast is my connection and how fast is the website with the download releasing the file.  So my 47MBps download speed is hindered if the source site is releasing it at 30MBps.

Some sites release files much slower than others so it is a little hit and miss.

Overall I am delighted with our move.  The landline phone (which we only use for incoming calls) works without a hitch.  Some NBN users with different suppliers can experience problems with the old 'landline phone' connection.

The rainfall up here has been incredible over the last week or so.  We have now had well over 10" or 250mls of rain.  We have gone from a dry year to one which is around average.  Areas about 50k's to north of us (around Noosa) have had twice the rain we have had.

I managed a bike ride yesterday but today's ride was thwarted by a very light rogue shower.  It was enough to make the roads and footpath wet.  Today there aren't any mudguards on bikes so a bike ride on wet paths means you get sprayed all over.