About SJPONeill

Retired(ish) and living on the side of a mountain. I love reading and writing, pottering around with DIY in the garden and the kitchen, watching movies and building models from plastic and paper...I have two awesome daughters, two awesome grand-daughters and two awesome big dogs...lots of awesomeness around me...

Five Question Friday! 9/21/12

Posted on 25 September 2012 by SJPONeill

I was a bit slow off the mark with this edition of Five Question Friday over the weekend…too busy baking for Carmen’s birthday dinner on Saturday and then we had the twins on Sunday, and Monday?…Well, I was just knackered and still had the annual accounts to do – yes! I do know that the financial year ended in March!!

1. What is one grammar issue you cannot let go without correction?

Absolutely and positively, apostrophe abuse…for example, the difference between it’s and its – why don’t people just get it!

2. What’s your favourite thing about fall?

Here, in civilisation we call it autumn (if it ain’t broke…)…best thing about it for me is looking forward to that first snow of winter…assuming of course, that winter actually arrives…it took its own sweet time this year and while this looks pretty chilly:

…this was as we had the next morning:

Pretty pathetic really and now that the days are getting longer and flowers are starting to pop out, it’s unlikely that we’ll get any more this year – unless of course, I shift all the delicate plants out from their winter shelters…

3. What’s your favourite dish to take to a potluck?

For Carmen, it would have to be one of her uber-pavlovas, either au naturel or deconstructed…for me, on the those occasions when I might be allowed to take my cooking out of the house, probably my South African curry (options of vegetarian or not).

4. When do you start Christmas (Holiday) shopping?

Despite great aspirations every year, normally the fortnight before, although the greater panic is not so much the shopping as getting everything all wrapped up and in the mail for those family not in the immediate geography…

5. Did you move homes a lot growing up?

Nope…not once…my parents are still in the same house that I grew up in and left home from…

…to Invercargill in 1983, then Burnham, Singapore and Linton up to the mid-90s, then Trentham and Khandallah, finally in 2004 to where we are now in Raurimu…

Of course, it has changed just a little since we arrived….

Weekly Writing Challenge: A Few of My Favorite Things

Posted on 25 September 2012 by SJPONeill

This is a toughie…since this popped in my inbox ~~early this morning~~ a couple of weeks ago (have been dillydallying – yes, it IS a word – over a simple thing like taking the two photos), I have been keeping an eye out as I have drifted around the house, an eye out for a few of my favourite things…well, there’s Kirk and Lulu, of course, who follow me all around the house…except for when Kirk disappeared ~~this morning~~ a morning a couple of weeks ago after breakfast: we got a possum on a couple of Sundays ago and so I think he’s kinda hopeful of getting another – I don’t know if he’s noticed yet but Lulu and Deeda have already stolen Sunday’s possum from where he buried it – tarts! – and there’s not much left of it now… (nope – Lulu was last seen with a bit of possum snout sticking out of her mouth and that was all she wrote)…

So…favourite things…I’m always rapt to acquire another book to replace one of the many that went missing or were ‘borrowed’ while I was on the move in the 80s and 90s…I now have all the Airfix Annuals again less #3 and thought it was a real coup to score a full set of the short-lived (all four!) Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine from the late 70s, complete with the posters…this was the one that, in each issue, analysed a modern (70s) science-fiction movie, one from the 60s and one from the 50s and merged themes from each into a poster in each issue….I still smile when I think of the article that tried to calculate the physical size that the Enterprise’s computer would have to be to hold all the information retrieved from it during the Original Series of Star Trek, drawing the conclusion that it would be impossible by virtue of its sheer bulk for any computer to hold that much information…meanwhile 35 years later…

I still have odds’n’sods from soldiering days…my Gerber ‘letter opener’, various bits and pieces of web gear that might be useful one day – Carmen was quick to commandeer my secateurs and folding tree saw pouches onto a belt for her forays into the Lodge’s garden/forest – and I still jealousy guard the original day park and vest webbing we developed in 1 RNZIR…oh, yes, and of course, there’s the hat collection that graces the big beam running across the study, acquired from here and there…thirty odd years of military head-dress…less the warmer stuff that has found its way into the cold weather front line of hooks by the back door…

But the thing is, I’m not really that attached to any of it…sure, I don’t want it to just be binned because each represents memories…my favourite cup when I was in Waiouru was the classic ‘cups’ canteen’ partly because it held a lot of coffee but also because some fairly brutal attrition and experimentation showed that, of all cup types, it was the absolute least likely to be stolen…I don’t think that I have any one thing (non-breathing anyway!) that I would be desperately cut up about if I were to loose it…I’d be hacked off to loose my photo collection but I’d get over it, and ditto for the book and movie library and my still growing model collection (although I am getting better and slowing down on acquisition)…

Some things you just can’t beat…

Weekly Photo Challenge: Solitary

Posted on 25 September 2012 by SJPONeill

A traditional rural long-drop ‘dunny’…a great place for solitary introspection…but kinda scary to navigate to by night with only a flickering torch or candle – rule of thumb: the darker and scarier the night the greater the rate of flicker – it’s a physics thing…

And this…

…a single solitary Bambi that used to visit over the summer of 2009/10…he was pretty bold and sometimes would come right up and look in through the front door…we’re sure that he is still around as we get occasional sightings on the front lawn…

Modded lamb and egg kofta

Posted on 17 September 2012 by SJPONeill

According to that font of all knowledge, Wikipedia, “…in the simplest form, koftas consist of balls of minced or ground meat—usually beef or lamb—mixed with spices and/or onions…” Last night, I had to make something that consumed some defrosted lamb chops before they became good for only consumption by the walking carpets and that also consumed a reasonable number of eggs. As you can see, the girls in the coop have been working overtime…

A quick google (is this a Scrabble-acceptable word yet?) brought me to a contender at ITV.com:

For the koftas:

1 kg minced lamb
½ onion, peeled and finely grated
4 tsp ground cumin
4 tsp ground coriander
2 tsp paprika
2 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp ground cinnamon
½ large bunch fresh coriander, finely chopped
½ large bunch fresh parsley, finely chopped
Salt and pepper

For the sauce:

3-4 tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, peeled and finely chopped
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp ground coriander
2 tsp paprika
½ tsp cayenne pepper
2 tbsp tomato purée
2x 400 g tins chopped tomatoes
2 tbsp each chopped fresh parsley and coriander
A pinch of granulated sugar
1 egg, per person
Baguette, to serve

I was going to mince the lamb once I boned it but that got a little too hard i.e. I was getting hungry…so Mod 1 was to dice the lamb and brown it with the ingredients for the koftas above; Mod 2 substituted two teaspoons of crushed (store bought) coriander.Mod 3 did away with the pinch of granulated sugar because I forgot.

Once the lamb was browned, it was added to the sauce mix . At the same time, I tossed a cup of rice into the rice cooker (after, of source, rinsing the rice three times to remove any dust or residues). The interesting thing about this recipe is that the eggs are cooked sitting on top of the mix. I left this a little late and was still waiting when the ‘ready’ button popped on the rice cooker. I probably should have dropped the eggs in about ten minutes earlier so that everything all came together at the same time.

As you can see, one of the eggs broke during addition but this wasn’t much of a biggie in the big scheme of things and it came out reasonably close to the image on the original ITV recipe:

As the original recipe was for a mince dish, serving would have been a doddle: because I diced the lamb instead of mincing it, I had not factored in the extra difficulty in scooping out the eggs amidst the chunks of lamb without causing the eggs to break apart. A lesson for next time although, in all truthfulness, cooking the eggs in the kofta mix is a bit of a novelty but could be just as easily cooked separately and laid on top of the kofta mix and rice. This would let the eggs retain a flavour distinct from the spices of the kofta mix – as it is the eggs only really provide a textural contrast to the rice and kofta.

The ultimate test is of course the taste test. Despite the quantity of spices in the kofta and sauce, the taste was nice but nothing special although I did overcook aka burn the onion and spices as I got distracted in the laundry at a critical moment + we have been wondering if we need to turn over our spices more often to keep them fresh and active. I think that this is more down to me than the original recipe so I will report back after I have another crack at this, next time using minced meat..and paying more attention to the heat for the spices….

Man Down

Posted on 17 September 2012 by SJPONeill

Some of Bruce’s boys…Signals Platoon Christmas Function, Coes Ford, 1986…

It is with great sadness this morning that I note the passing last night of Bruce Rosser, RNZIR. The word had only gone round the old boys net last week that Bruce was pretty crook with cancer and I was planning on writing to him or shooting over to New Plymouth to see him. Some of the lads did go round to see him at home yesterday morning…I can only agree with what others posted after the visit

” …now that’s what the NZ Army is all about. I can tell looking at all the body language you guys would have had him laughing ……. good on you all. You guys make me proud!!!”

“… I hope I have friends like this when its my time. Can’t believe there is nearly 150 years of military history in the room. (good and BAD history that is)…”

People have commented over the years on how unusual it is that we can not see someone for decades and then carry on the last conversation we had way back then. It’s not that unusual really, just a sign of a community with a highly transient population that is constantly shifting around between postings, courses and deployments.

It was long, only a few hours later that two new messages were posted…

“…Guys, only just got back from Brucies place, he past on at 1815hrs tonight. As his “boss” Susie said to me, he just said” I’ve had enough”, and signed out a short time later. So glad the local boys spent time with him this morning, all our aroha to Susie and the children at this time. Will keep all updated on this means…”

“…MAN DOWN: NEWS has just com through from the Rosser family that bruce passed away approximately 30 mins ago. God bless you our brother. Deepest thoughts to susie and the family…”

Bruce was our platoon sergeant when I was posted to the 2/1 RNZIR Signals Platoon in 1986, on graduation from Corps Training and after a brief foray into the Mortar Platoon (too much maths for me). He came across as gruff and grumpy as sergeants generally do but was firm but fair as the good ones are and in the same vein fiercely looked out for his troops and went to bat for us on a regular basis. Sometimes that was because soldierly enthusiasm had gone astray (Burnham weekends revolved around the Baggies, the Melly, and ‘town’ – all fine upstanding institutions) but equally as often to right some wrong or get something working.

I think of Bruce on an almost daily basis…every time that I cut a corner on the road, I think of Bruce admonishing me to “…use the whole of the road…” on one of the many trips that members of 2/1 would make through the Lewis Pass. On this particular trip, I was driving ‘the Sarge’ in a V8 Landrover (sounds cool but not one of the Army’s bigger success stories) and he was getting frustrated that I was one of those ‘crank it on the straights, brake it on the corner’ drivers – possibly because my cornering kept waking him up! So for the new few hours, I got some very pointed one-on-one driving instruction that has stuck with me for the last quarter century – all about making the best use of the road available to you…

I think that trip was either going to or returning from the Women’s National Golf Tournament where the sigs provided comms and progress reports from the greens back to the club house. It was a bit of a break for us and a welcome change from Lake Brunner in winter where we did a lot of our training. Through the power of sergeants (like the power of Greyskull or Green Lantern but better and bigger), Bruce had arranged for us to stay in a cheap motel in Nelson for the duration and that our time was our own out of working hours so long as…we avoided certain pubs…everyone was good to go each morning…Bruce didn’t get any calls from the Police or the boss…big boys rules. It was a great week and while my memories of it have faded, my memories of that driving lesson from ‘the Sarge’ is as vivid today as it was back then…I can still see Bruce, in his DPM smock squinting across the Landrover at me “…boy, are you sure you’ve got a licence to drive?…”

I don’t recall ever having a platoon or company photo while I was in 2/1 and so when I searched through the archives at home for some images from those days, the cupboard was rather bare – certainly there are no official photos that I have and no personal one with Bruce in them. The photo above is from our platoon function at the end of 1986 and shows a few of us that Bruce looked after so well…

These two reprobates weren’t in the Signals Platoon although, like everyone else, they wanted to be…but this pic from Ex LOTHLORIEN 1986 shows the bikes and V8 Rovers that Bruce tirelessly made sure we looked after and kept all our paperwork and maintenance up to speed. This would be a part of battalion headquarters and one of our bikes being stolen in this pic – aside from the Sigs who held it all together, battalion headquarters was full of dodgy sorts…

I don’t think that I ever saw Bruce after he was posted from the platoon – I think that he went to a cadre role in one of the TF units – and that’s why I was quite looking forward to seeing him again when we heard that he was ill last week…

Peace be with you, Sarge…no more pain where you are…

ONWARD

Weekly Photo Challenge: Everyday Life

Posted on 16 September 2012 by SJPONeill

My take on everyday life…just random shots I dragged out of Picasa… …heading back into Washington after Josh and I did a day visit to Quantico…

…monsoon season in Kota Bahru…the great Thailand-Singapore Bike Ride…

…tight little English streets in Salisbury during the inaugural ABCA CLAW…

…and a summer’s day in Turangi…

An Ear To The Ground

Posted on 12 September 2012 by SJPONeill

Like many people, I opted not to comment on the 911 anniversary yesterday (it’s already six hours into September 12 here), although as one adversary pointed out, the date remains significant anyway as it marks the airing of the last ever Get Smart episode in 1970. The same pundit also reminded me that there are other such anniversaries that we do not remember so much…

It started to snow last night – finally, the first snow of the season and it’s spring already – and I got up early to check on things, well, really to see how heavy it was to determine if I could have a longer sleep-in this morning because the roads are closed…not such luck and it looks as thought the bulk of it missed us…

Anyway, now being awake, I couldn’t get back to sleep and so logged in to check emails etc before heading away for the day. Sitting there was an email from Ben Ianotta with whom I had done some work while he was editor of C4ISR Journal promoting a new venture, Deep Diver Intelligence. Always keen to check out new ventures and ideas, I had a look and hit the article on the renewal (or not) of the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) first…[access is free til 17 September, then I’m not sure so will post a PDF of the article if it drops offline] It’s a good article and worth reading and thing about…

It’s an interesting issue and I think that the key point that may be overlooked in all the Big Brother paranoia is that this type of data collection is happening already in the commercial/corporate arena. Google now quite openly ‘reads’ our emails in order to customise the advertisements that it subjects us – under its ‘do no harm’ philosophy, would/should Google withhold potentially useful information of a national security nature if it stumbles across it?

The genie is already out of the bottle and we need to look at how we deal with it not cry into our milk about how we can’t put it back in. At least the FISA discussions encourage that discussion. We live in an information age now and we need to accept that things will change in respect to our ‘rights’. This is nothing new and simply a fact of civilization’s evolution: the rights that we have now are nothing like those of two centuries ago when our nations were settled and explored…things change, we need to get used to that idea.

Unless we all totally give up access to electronic information and opt to live in a cave in the hills somewhere, the simple fact is that information is being collected on us all the time. When you really get down to it, a lot of that information has been collected for a long long time: what has changed is that we now have technologies that allow us to merge much of the information. It’s still largely aspirational that this merging will enable us to join the dots a la Person of Interest – in fact, that is one reason I don’t like this series: because it does present such an omnipotent perspective that the story just becomes boring – much like the old Star Trek ‘get out of jail free’ cards of time travel or fiddling the transporter cache – but my point is that this data collection is really nothing new.

“You are being watched. The government has a secret system: a machine that spies on you every hour of every day. I know because I built it. I designed the machine to detect acts of terror, but it sees everything. Violent crimes involving ordinary people, people like you. Crimes the government considered irrelevant. They wouldn’t act, so I decided I would. But I needed a partner, someone with the skills to intervene. Hunted by the authorities, we work in secret. You’ll never find us, but victim or perpetrator, if your number’s up…we’ll find you.” ~ Person of Interest voiceover.

A theme through the article, reflective of more the attitudes of intelligence agencies than the author, in my opinion, is that FISA has failed because it has not been able to directly identify and interdict a major adversary action. A couple of thoughts on this…

First up, we seem to be thinking/hoping that major adversary actions will be in a forms that we recognise i.e. think the Arizona, the Twin Towers, or the invasion of Kuwait. One might ask who really manipulated who in the Arab Spring which resulted in the demise of a number of stability-promoting regional strong men; or why we expect the worst of ISAF forces in Afghanistan but so desperately seek the faintest glimmer of anything remotely redeemable in our adversaries there; or whether last year’s Notting Hill rampage was really just a spontaneous boil-over?

Second, we seem to have forgotten that, in the contemporary environment as opposed to the Fulda Gap, it may be impossible to winnow out from all the noise, the key information that points to an impending action. This is what I call ‘intelitis’: the overpowering desire of many intel analysts to be able to jab a finger at the map, preferably in front of their boss’ boss, and state that Third Shock or Eight Guards Army will do X at X time on X day. Uh-huh…whatever…where were you guys for the end of the Cold War, Fiji Coups 1-57 or the Falklands War…? Huh? More likely, in the contemporary environment, that accumulated data may serve as a foundation for a rapid and precise response (do people get the distinction between ‘response’ and ‘reaction’?) in much the same way as CRIMINT rarely predicts which dairy/bank/service station is going to get knocked over next but is able to quickly narrow down the likely candidates…

A bigger concern than FISA might be the continuance of the post-Cold War trend for private industry to be leaps and bounds ahead of public technology and to be now quite happily exploiting this data for its own commercial ends. In other words, repealing FISA and like legislation is much like opting to fly everywhere to counter an IED threat – all you are really doing is ceding a whole chunk of your operating environment to someone else. Just because contemporary adversaries don’t want to play by the rules we like, doesn’t mean that they are not going to invite us to their next conflict: the information environment is now as much an operating environment as air, land, sea or space – the key difference is that it is the one environment where we are being walked all over.

So, anyway, take the time if you have an intel bent to have a look at Deep Dive…interested in your thoughts…

2012 ESRI International User Conference

Posted on 11 September 2012 by SJPONeill

This just popped into my inbox while I was on a break…who would have though that a couple of years ago, Hawkeye was two guys in an tiny back office between an accountant and a dentist?

Great to see this team getting into the big leagues…my comments in red (doctrine writers can’t resist red pens in any form…)…

Hawkeye UAV was fortunate enough to be invited to exhibit at this year’s ESRI GIS User Conference in San Diego. With a sponsored booth in a prime position in Hall D we could only say “Yes, thank you!” So in late July, Rowland and myself made our way across from New Zealand. Rowland left the week prior to the UC in order to attend the preconference seminars, conduct some meetings and make our technology accessible to the Survey community. Along with the two of us, and providing their expertise on the photogrammetry processing were Luke, Hayden and Sheryl from Areo.

The first big coup was ESRI’s invitation to have our display bird on the main stage for the duration of the weekend and Plenary sessions at the start of the Conference. To put all this in perspective, the “main stage” is in front of a room in the region of 200m long, and is backed by three HUGE screens. The room hosted 16,000 people at one time, so a lot of GIS professionals saw our UAV onstage and some of our data as part of the plenary presentations.

An ESRI speaker talks about the AreoHawk onstage during the conference opening plenary

In fact many folks mentioned to us at the booth that they’d seen the AreoHawk onstage and asked about the content in the keynote presentation. It was both humbling an exciting to have our technology out there in front of the world.

Supporting us this year at our first time attending the ESRI UC were Hawkeye UAV Americas (HUA) – our North American partners from Tactical Systems Engineering. They were represented by Drew Gwyer, Dave Molthen and Ermie, and were brilliant in helping man the booth, collecting information and assisting people with their inquiries. Their local knowledge of San Diego was of great benefit also!

Check out these guys’ website some very cool and innovative kit there – I really want to get my mitts on WINGMAN and DACTYL to have a play with – possibly why they’re part of HUA (is that a take off ‘Hoo-aahh!’?)….

Special mention must also be made of Mark Deuter, Director of Aerometrex our distributor in Australia. He zoomed in from Australia to lend his vast expertise of all things aerial photography and provide a bit of Aussie contrast to the strong Kiwi flavour on the booth.

Monday before the conference start was our day to set up the booth before the Exhibitor Expo got underway Tuesday. Tuesday started with a hiss and a roar – when we were allowed into the exhibition hall at 8am to do our final setup and start the demos rolling, we only just got in before the influx of people started. It was soon apparent that we hadn’t printed nearly enough flyers to keep up with demand! If you were one of those who missed out, I’m very sorry. But we did get some more done to see us out until the end of the UC. The candy ran out before the end of day one too!

Hawkeye UAV booth in the middle of “UAS Central” at the ESRI UC 2012

The UAV seen here in the flesh (and in the top pic) and on the screen is the Hawkeye UAV home-grown aerial vehicle, AreoHawk – for its size, it has some pretty impressive performance specs and it is interesting to note, just how short its gestation period from first thought to first flight…

The conference has been a huge success for us. We have literally been hand-launched (rather than catapulted) onto the World’s stage. Interest from all over the globe and the United States has been tremendous and very encouraging. HUA/TSE share our ethos and vision for leading the precision survey Unmanned Aerial System market. It is also apparent to us that we not only have a world class system that’s been developed here in New Zealand, but the AreoGraph process is second to none.

We now expect our tempo to rise, and our global footprint to reach wider and further than before. A large number of confirmed sales and survey jobs have already come from the ESRI UC and we expect more to follow as soon as demonstrations and follow ups can be arranged.

Rules and Regulations:

Simply put, to fly UAS’s in the United States today you must either be a Government, Federal or State agency or a ‘not for profit’ organisation, such as a University. Federal Aviation Administration regulations currently require these parties to obtain a Certificate of Authorization (COA) before flight. In conjunction with HUA/TSE we are actively working with FAA representatives to achieve an accreditation for the licensed commercial flight of the AreoHawk system within the United States. We currently hold such accreditation in New Zealand with the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and are also underway with CASA (Civil Aviation Safety Authority) registration for Australia. We strongly believe our unblemished record will stand us in good stead in this regard.

Good point, well made…regardless of the size or whether you picked it up at Toyworld or Foreign Military Sales’R’Us, UAS of all sized need to operated in a controlled manner, with rules that are clear, understood and complied with by all involved. Nowhere is this more vital that in this category of AVs below 6kg where the common popular (mis)perception is that they are too small to matter so you can do what you like with them…well, you ain’t in Iraq anymore, Toto: if something bigger and faster takes your battery down an intake or through a window, well…let’s just say that we hope you’ve keep your liability insurance payments current. This being the case, it is good to see a commercial operator expounding these principles…

It has always been our intention, especially as aviators ourselves, to comply with and exceed the expectations of the governing body where these matters are concerned. Hence our emphasis on safety, failsafe systems, compliance and training.

Improved Areo Process:

We have found now that with the new and vastly improved AreoHawk processing software that we can re-process old jobs and archived imagery with great success. Second time around the quality of the orthos and the density of the point clouds are an amazing contrast.

This Areo process is damn exciting to anyone with any interest in the shape of the ground and/or object on it – with the new processes and the upgraded sensors on Areohawk – what you are seeing here is not a simple 2D image of the area but a 3D manipulatable (if that’s not a word it should be, meaning able to be manipulated) model of the surveyed area [makes note to nag Hawkeye guys about a Flash-based user steerable demo model] so, if you’re say, a miner, it’ll let you calculate how much spoil you taken from your mine; if you’re a shooter, it’ll let you work out to a high degree of accuracy lines of sight from shooters to shootees…

Semi-urban data resampled under the new Areo process. Point cloud data only is currently being displayed

More pictures from San Diego:

With the big guy! Drew, Simon, Jack Dangermond (ESRI CEO) and Rowland at the close of this year’s User Conference

Hawkeye UAV Ltd booth at this year’s ESRI International User Conference

US Navy A4 on the deck of the museum aircraft carrier, USS Midway

Can’t pass up a visit to any handy museums while in loc – although an A4 is a piece of paper: an A-4 is a lot cooler and faster –

Weekly Photo Challenge: Near and Far

Posted on 8 September 2012 by SJPONeill

WordPress’ take on ‘near and far’ is meant to be about mechanical perspective but perspective is relative…

In 1985, I was also a (very) junior member of the local Territorial Force (TF) company, Alpha Company of the 4th (Otago Southland) Battalion. The larger proportion of our soldiers were all freezing workers from one of the major freezing working around Invercargill and they all had difficulty getting to the TF annual training Camp in January (to align with scarfie school holidays) as that was the peak of the works season. On one of his vists to the deepest South, it was put to Chief of General Staff MAJGEN John Mace that shifting the annual camp to the works offpeak season would be a great enabler for local recruiting. He took up the challenge and stated that if A Coy could put a full company on the ground In October, he’d be good for a company deployment to Singapore…

So A Coy put a company ++ on the ground in Tekapo, meeting its side of the deal….lots and lots of adventures that fortnight, I can tell you…

I was also in the last year of my lineman apprenticeship with Telecom and in this phase of my training, I was spending some time with the rigging section that maintain the radio towers scattered around the Southland Plains. Fifty feet is quite near, until you are fifty feet up a tower on a breezy day…then it snowed which was the end of tower-climbing for the day…

This was the day before we staged through Dunedin and flew out to Singapore – 4000 hours (or so it seemed) on a Herc across the red dust of Australia for a one night stopover in Darwin to the sweltering humidity of South East Asia to our home for the next six weeks…Dieppe Barracks, Singapore…

Not that we spent much time there…shake out on the ground and almost immediately off across the Causeway to hit the jungle for Ex PEMBURA RUSA…helicopters…rain…snakes…rain…hornets…rain…more rain…and almost as much fun as there was rain…

Weekly Photo Challenge: Free Spirit

Posted on 5 September 2012 by SJPONeill

Tommy

The theme here was ‘free spirit‘.

This is Carmen’s big brother, Tommy, and no words describe him better than those for he truly was the free-est of spirits.

Tommy passed away the week before last.

Tommy loved colours. If you saw a canary yellow coffin whizzing around Auckland a couple of weekends ago on the back of a Nissan ute, that was Tommy’s.

Tommy was always aware of what was happening around him. His brother-in-law, Chris, tells how he tried to teach Tommy about traffic lights…red means stop, green means go, over and over as Tommy got the idea. Chris, then, went for the next stage “OK, Tommy, we’re coming up to an orange…what do you this we should do?” Without an instant’s hesitation, Tommy roared “PUT YOUR BLOODY FOOT DOWN!!” Yep. he knew what has going on…

Tommy loved jigsaws – I’d seen him tackle some pretty complex ones getting onto a thousand pieces – he never looked at the box-art though – just assembled the shapes in his mind and chipped away at it away til he finished.

Tommy loved the water. Regardless of circumstance or temperature, he would launch himself into it, always in the flattest of belly flops – and some of those impacts must have hurt – but he’d leap out of the water and launch himself again and again.

Tommy contracted meningitis as a baby and never recovered from the damage it wrought so got to spend his life as a four year old – there are far worse ways to go through life, I reckon…

RIP

Tommy Grey

Free Spirit