visiting friends and family in Melbourne......

continuing on with our visit to Melbourne from when we flew into Tullamarine Airport on Saturday Nov 15th at 6.00am..... caught a cab to Janines house at Watsonia, staggered at the price being $49.80 just for a 20 minute ride. But we arrived safely which is probably more important!

Janine was still away, but she had kindly left everything out on the table for us a few weeks earlier .... keys to her car, keys for Blackwood, a list of where things were and even better - long life milk sitting in the fridge ready for us to make coffee on our arrival!!!

......so we unpacked and had a shower before heading out for the day.

straight to Caulfield to do a "property inspection" at our property there, just to make sure everything is OK and no major maintenance being required in the near future, then off to Southland Shopping Center for some long overdue shopping of underwear, jeans, shoes and other such items that we find difficult to obtain (for us anyway) here in Singapore.

Had lunch there which we did not enjoy one little bit ....... some sort of Souvlaki made with PROCESSED meat that really was uneatable...... in the past (pre Singapore) we always enjoyed a souvlaki and were looking forward to something we had not eaten for nearly two years, but we are not in a hurry to repeat it now. Maybe we should have gone to a REAL Greek corner store rather than one in a food court of a large shopping mall.

After we left there we went to the Bonbeach Residential Care (Nursing Home) to visit our dear friends Barbara and David Kolle and also my mother who is a resident there. Barbara visits her husband daily so we knew she would be there too. Had a pleasant few hours chatting with them both and visiting mum too, though not much in the way of conversation with my mother as she had a stroke over 6 years ago and is now "little more than a vegetable".

Barbara came in to say goodbye as she had to get back home and then we left soon after. We had a ROBERTS family dinner to attend at a Chinese Restaurant in Berwick, this is where we catch up with a lot of the older members of the family about once a year......though I am rapidly approaching being one of the "older members" now too !!!

We left there just after 10.00pm and drove back to Watsonia in the pouring rain in Janines car along an unfamiliar freeway.......arriving back there at just on midnight, both VERY tired after a long day driving all over Melbourne and the overnight flight as well.

We had arranged to be at Jocelyn (Johns sister) and Davids for lunch the following day (Sunday) and I had asked John before we went to sleep what time would he like to be there, his reply was "about 10.30am". So off to the land of nod we went........ zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

waking up at .... what?

7.30 according to my cell phone.

hang on....... 7.30am?

John checks his phone only to realize it is in fact TEN THIRTY, my cell phone had not regulated itself to Melbourne time and was still on Singapore time.

Here we are just waking up at 10,30am, an unheard of experience as far as I am concerned and we were hoping to be at Joce's by this time........ well we bolt out of bed, into the shower, get dressed and on the road arriving in time (only just) at about 12.30pm.

But how wonderful it was to catch up with the family and to see those two special little munchkins (Nick and Sophie), well perhaps Nick is not so little anymore as he is off to school in the new year. :-(

We really had a lovely BBQ lunch with lots of good food, drinks and company.





Monday there was more shopping and sorting of a few things including visiting my friends at RMH and another property inspection, this time of our place in North Melbourne....from there it was dinner with friends Lynne and Mick...... again a feast to enjoy and indulge in.

Tuesday morning saw us heading off to Blackwood, which is written about in great detail in the previous posting. .... we then arrived back into Melbourne late on Sunday.

Will continue on with our visit to Bonbeach on Monday in next posting.......

our visit to Blackwood in Victoria, Australia!

well, I really don't know where to start!!

we left Singapore on Friday November 14 .... We boarded the flight at 9.00pm on Friday and did not leave till just on 9.30 ...OVER an hour late.......couldn't believe it. Then once on board the inflight entertainment was not working so they re-booted it, still did not work ...so no music, movie etc ..... not only that, the reading light was ON all night....it would not turn OFF the complete night. So no sleep of course!!!

Was not the best flight, a bit bumpy, but sleep was quite impossible with the light on all night. Dinner was just so so, we wanted the Asian noodles with vegies, but by the time they got to us they had ran out, so all that was left was lamb curry. I didn't eat it, John did tho because he was so hungry by this time, as it was about 10.30pm!!!

So that was our overnight flight on Friday!! .......... anyway off we headed to Melbourne, our reason for going was to sort, pack, store and clean the holiday house at Blackwood (Victoria, Australia) with the view to leasing it long term.

Photo's are of Blackwood Cottage:


Never have I worked so hard, well I should say, never have WE worked so hard..... that is John and myself.

It took five full days to sort thru all the furniture, the cupboards, the store room etc.

So much to do.

Not only that the garden area was a complete mess.

John was horrified as he had always kept it neat and tidy. But being empty for so long and no-one going there it just became neglected. Of course winter is now over in that part of the world and there have been many storms bringing down branches, leaves and other garden rubbish.



But one full day cleaning and tidying in and around the garden it started to look a million dollars!!!

The other four days was spent inside and under the house. In that time we also found a tenant for at least 12 mths and a gardener to come in once a month to keep the garden area at least tidy.

it was 5 days full days at Blackwood, but WE DID IT. !!!

The rest of the time in Melbourne was spent with a few family members and friends........ apart from these few highlights, we really did not enjoy our time "back home", it certainly fell short of our expectations!

(more about our visit in the next posting)

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the water of Singapore

a little about the water of Singapore, mainly because so many people ask me "is it safe to drink" ....... and the answer is YES!
Rains and Singapore are like a twin brother. Lying in the tropical zone, the country is always moist and faces heavy rainfall; the rain in Singapore usually comes shortly, but intensively. Rainstorms cover about 40% of the period in the so called "rainy season" of November to January........
(Though if you read my previous posts regarding the weather, the rain really is all year long!!)

Although Singapore faces heavy rainfalls, it lacks adequate water supply for its population and has to import the water from Malaysia. A worrying fact for the Singaporean is that its current water contract with Malaysia will not provide sufficient water supply for the next decade. The other alternatives such as desalination or water importation from Indonesia will raise the water cost up to almost 10 folds, thus levying a heavy burden on the Singaporeans. Singapore, an insular island, lacks fresh water till they have to pay for fresh water imported from Malaysia, but due to its expense, they may not sign the new contract for the next decade. In order to save bills, the authority has been finding the way to provide fresh water for Singaporeans on their own.

.... and from Wikipedia....

The water resources of Singapore are especially precious given the small amount of land and territory in Singapore's geography while having a large urban population in the city-state. Without natural freshwater lakes, the primary domestic source of water in Singapore is rainfall, collected in reservoirs or water catchment areas. Prior to the opening of the Marina Bay reservoir, rainfall supplied approximately 50% of Singapore's water; that should now be about 67% due to the additional catchment area.

The remainder is imported from Malaysia, recycled from waste water (producing NEWater) and produced via desalination.

This "four tap" strategy aims to reduce reliance on foreign supply and to diversify Singapore's water sources.NEWater is the brand name given to reclaimed water produced by Singapore's public utilities. More specifically, it is treated wastewater (sewage) that has been purified using dual-membrane (via microfiltration and reverse osmosis) and ultraviolet technologies, in addition to conventional water treatment processes.

There are three NEWater factories, located at the Bedok, Kranji Water Reclamation Plants, and Seletar Water Reclamation Plant, producing about 20 million US gallons per day (0.9 m³/s).

About 6% of this is used for indirect potable use, which contributes 1 % of Singapore's potable water requirements of 300 million US gallons per day (13 m³/s). The rest of the water is used at wafer fabrication plants and other non-potable applications in industries. The fourth recycling plant, with a capacity of 32 million gallons per day opened in Ulu Pandan on 15 March 2007. With this new capacity coming on stream, NEWater can now meet 15 % of Singapore's water needs.

On 13 September 2005, the country opened its first desalination plant by SingSpring, a fully-owned subsidiary of Hyflux. The plant, located at Tuas, produces 30 million gallons of water (136,380 m³) each day. Worth S$200 million, it is one of the biggest in the world and meets 10 percent of the country's water needs.

The plant also produces bottled water called the Desal H2O. At the desalination plant, sea water is forced through plastic membranes with microscopic pores to extract dissolved salts. Silt is removed by dousing the seawater with chemicals that coagulate the particles. Coinciding with the official opening of the desalination plant, the International Desalination Association (IDA) held its 6-day World Congress in Singapore.

About six hundred experts and delegates attended the congress to discuss about desalination and water reuse. Several experts suggested that Singapore could become the world's water hub for water recycling and desalination technology and could export this technology to the world including China. Dr Masaru Kurihara, director of IDA, said that with the new technology in water reclamation, waste water would become the most important sustainable water resource in the future.

Singapore International Water Week - June 22 - 26 2009