Démenagé

So..

We moved in to our new home, as planned, last Thursday..

The Lifeline people kindly delivered us a few small items of furniture.. A fridge, a sofa, a coffee table, a kitchen table with 2 chairs, a wardrobe and a bed.. Unfortunately the bed is sort of too small for us. Too short, lengthwise for me, and not wide enough for the both of us, so for the time being, we've borrowed a couple of single mattresses from Fruitopia..

Meanwhile, we've also invested in another couple of small tables, a juicer like we had in Sydney, and some small bedding things.. We've also started mosquito proofing the house, by tightly drawingpinning net curtains to the window frames.. A nifty little solution that's far more cost effective than investing in mozzymeshing..

We're both very happy to finally have a home of our own. It even has a carport which is keeping the car dry and out of the sun.. (Torrential downpour happening right at this moment folks!)

Actually, while on the subject of the car, I was just noticing how much more petrol we've been consuming since since moving up here, and it's really taking up a far bigger chunk of our monthly expenses than it did back in Sydney days.. I suppose the furthest we travelled there was from our home in Malabar to Kingsford where we generally travelled twice weekly for fruit.. That would've been a round trip of 30 kms or so. Here, we are voyaging to Cairns and back weekly, a round trip of easily 130kms, and often travelling to Atherton and further afield once or twice a week, adding up to considerably more than 70kms per trip.. Not to mention small trips in and out of Mareeba centre, which although that'll be lessened now, as we have moved closer to the centre than Fruitopia was, it's still significant..

So we're considering getting some kind of conversion done to the engine to reduce the petrol consumption and instead use one of those water fuel cell things.. To be honest, I really am not mechanically minded at all, but there's this guy at the Saturday markets that has a stall where he claims to be selling something he calls Hydrogen Water Fuel Cell Technology (his business is called "Hydroxyboost").. It's not something that will run your engine 100% on water, which of course is what we'd prefer, but his little device that gets attached to the engine of the car can supposedly increase fuel efficiency by up to 40%, horsepower by up to 20% and reduce emissions by as much as 90%(!).. Bold claims that I would dearly love to believe in, but there's that nagging doubt that it may be all a con.. He claims that in other countries in the world, the US included, the government will actually subsidise the installation of the kit.. Are there any readers that may be able to confirm, or not, that this technology actually does as it claims, and genuinely works??

The claim is that the kit converts the car into a hybrid, of sorts, by using water as a catalyst, once it is broken down to HHO gas.. The guy pushing it certainly seems both genuine and keen and claims that he builds all the devices himself at home and can put us on to others that already have it installed and are reaping the benefits.. I'm enthused, just feel I need to do some more research online first, something we can't do easily yet, as still no internet connection here yet.. Although our phone line did activate yesterday, so internet shouldn't be too far away (we may nip into the library later today to check our emails and stuff, and maybe i'll post this off too)..

So yeah, we have a house and garden.. big mango tree and a tamarind tree too.. and Kveta's already planted out some aloe vera, and put down a few small cucumber seeds too.. We've also started burying our compost again, which is, we believe the quickest way to get it to break down back into yummy worm food soil. I think we may head back out to fruitopia for a visit soon, and pick some of their abundant cherry tomatoes to get the seed in the ground here.. Maybe dig up the odd pawpaw seedling if there're any the right size..

We're still very much in a state of unpackedness, and still organising here to get things the way we want it.. Kveta's been working hard on the kitchen floor which was left in a pretty filthy sticky state despite cleaners having supposedly been through the day before we moved in..

Powerpoints are few and far between which will mean trailing wires around the place, especially for the internet the phone line is in an odd inconvenient place, but I guess it's an old house, built back in the days when electrickery wasn't so popular as it is today..

Rang mum/dad and Helena last night to let them know our new telephone number..

Anyhow, happy we are..

peace,
mango