On the move

Friday 12th


Narwin arranged for me to move rooms. The room I stayed the first night was one of the wooden buildings – pine floorboards, walls etc. as well as the furniture. And the latter was the problem – not enough of it. No cupboards or drawers and no desk to use the laptop on.

The bathroom was interesting, quite small and the drain was at the opposite corner from the shower nozzle, virtually ensuring the entire floor got wet. It did have an exhaust fan so that was one positive. Can you count how many different sorts of tiles they used? I guess they just used whatever was around.

I moved to C3, next to the room I had last time and a mirage image in layout. There are 2 main differences – 2 singles rather than a double bed and no power point on the wall at the bed head. I have to run the power board from the other wall. Fortunately, unlike Australian power boards, which some corporate bright spark – no doubt an accountant – decreed that the cord should only be one metre long, this one is 2 or 3 metres and can actually reach far enough for my bedside lamp to plug into. This is the same lamp I bought last time, which I gave to the camp manager to store for me, just in case I came back.

I didn’t leave the office till after 6 yesterday. Its amazing how easy it is to work long hours here – not as many distractions as at home I guess.

Once I’d moved rooms and unpacked I changed and – wait for it – went for a run!!! Ok, maybe a jog is more accurate, but with only 2 weeks before the Australian Vets Championships I need to do some exercise. It stopped raining mid way through the day so that didn’t provide me with an excuse not to run.

I headed towards town and after 5 minutes was nearing the end of the streetlights. I’d just passed a Distance sign (ie a milepost but in km), so I thought I’d turn round and run back past the hotel until the next one the other side, thus giving me a good estimate of my distance. I in fact ran another 10 minutes past the hotel in the other direction, without seeing one, before turning back. 30 minutes wasn’t a bad start. If I can keep it up, I will get back some of the fitness I lost in the US where I did stuff all exercise, other than 1 run on a treadmill and 2 games of golf. I had planned to do some running before I left but didn’t think to put in the watch with the timer feature I’d bought specifically for running. I also probably should have sprayed myself with mossie repellent.

It was approaching 7-30 by then and I drank 2 bottles of water trying to cool down. Eventually I recovered enough to have dinner, since the canteen closes at 8. I just had a salad with a couple of crumbed prawns and pieces of fish and then an ice cream cone. The icecream cabinet is a new benefit, which has arrived sometime since my last visit.

Lunch was spare ribs with potatoes and cauliflower, cake and grapes. I skipped the soup.

Another thing that has changed is the countryside. Fields that I saw being planted with rice now have plants a foot or 2 high and the sugar cane and potato plants I recall seem to have grown several feet as well.

My driver arrived as I was writing the last bit and I am now in the office. I asked him to drive down to where I ran last night to get a measurement but his odometer only displays whole km so it’s not very accurate. I’d guess it was something like 4km in total.