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This latest edition of our aperiodical comes a full 2
years
after our last one. Time seems to evaporated in the blink of an eye.
Indeed, a further six months evaporated since starting to write this
epistle. In this edition we have all the regular sections; travel,
employment, health matters, and the education supplement. We also have
new literary times and entertainment sections.
One of the biggest changes to our lives, well Russell's mostly, is that when his contract came up for renewal at the end of 2004, it was not renewed. This came as quite a surprise, as he was integrally involved in several R&D programmes that were funded through to the end of 2006. After twelve years at UNSW in three different jobs, it was time to move on.
Using his paid-out long service leave, Russell decided to realise a long-held ambition to write a book on the philosophical topics he has been engaged with over the past few years on the internet (see literary times). Working at a feverish pace, it took just four months to produce the first draft of the book. At this time he started seriously looking for another job. However with the ``Tech Wreck'' of 2001, students are no longer studying computer science, and related subjects such as mathematics, so university positions were extremely thin on the ground. Whilst the technology sector has improved somewhat since 2001, Russell's skills are not aligned with typical ``enterprise'' computing applications. Breaking into a new job market is not easy, particularly for the more mature.
Russell decided instead to try and capitalise on his experience by targeting funded academic research groups with computational needs. He knew from previous experience it can be very hard to get appropriate skills, and even harder to make research funds stretch to a funded full-time position. Russell decided to set his own company, marketing himself as the product. Thus the idea of High Performance Coders was born. He can deliver a specific outcome sized to available funds, more reliably and typically in less time than a fresh postdoctoral graduate. Thus far he has had jobs with ANU in Canberra, UNSW, Charles Sturt University in Bathurst and University of Sherbrooke in Montreal. All of which were done from the comfort of home on an internet connection.
In addition to this work, he is employed on a contract basis by a company called Online English to translate scientific documents (typically in computer science) from ``fractured'' English into proper idiomatic English. Whilst not necessarily a big earner, it adds to the pool of income earned through High Performance Coders, and is also a motivation for reading a variety of interesting technical topics that sometimes impact on his regular work.
Finally, he also works part time, three days per week, for a financial software company that produces a software package called BoundaryRider that analyses the risk exposure of financial institutions. This is a small company that has recently expanded from 5 to 12 employees during the course of the year, more than half of whom have PhDs in a mathematical or computational field. It is an interesting an dynamic place to work for, and provides a steady stream of income.
As has been noted before, our CCSSes tend to get written whilst lazing away in some exotic foreign locale on a beach or by a pool. This one is no different -- this issue is being written on the island of Batam in Indonesia. Our friend Seow Juan offered us the use of his house at Nongsa village, the same house we stayed at five years ago (see CCSS issue 12), and we are currently enjoying a few days of utter relaxation.
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| Anita and Tony |
Prior to arriving at Batam, we travelled to Perth, ostensibly for the wedding of Russell's youngest brother Tony to his long term partner Anita, but also allowing us to continue our Advent tradition with Liz, who has moved to Perth for a three year posting. We had fun making a gingerbread house, a tradition Liz introduced us to on our first Advent trip in 2000. We transported the gingerbread house to Russell's parent's new house ``Roseden'' in Ferguson Valley. The gingerbread house was demolished at our ``first'' Christmas dinner.
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| Hal and Liz |
We played ``tourists'' in Perth. Liz very kindly drove us north some 250km to the Pinnacles, an area of desert with interesting sandstone formations. We also spent a day on Rottnest Island just 12 km offshore from Perth, but situated in the warm Leeuwin current so boasts the most southern living coral in the world, one that is hot pink in colour. We took our snorkels and goggles and snorkelled at three different beaches, but one could easily spend a week and snorkel at different location each day.
Leaving Perth, we travelled by train to Russell's parent's new home ``Roseden'', situated in the lovely Ferguson valley around 20 minutes from the centre of Bunbury, a city located 2 hours drive south of Perth. It was our first visit to Roseden, so Russell's parents Pete and Lu transported us to some of the local highlights, including Gnomesville and a simulation coal mine in the nearby town of Collie. Gnomesville is a quirky ``town'' of garden gnomes, deposited by local groups and passing travellers, with witty messages and sometimes quite elaborate themes. It has become quite the tourist attraction. Hal wanted to place his own gnome there, so Granny Lu bought him a couple of gnomes, and Hal built ``G'Hal's Gnome G'Home'' for one gnome to live in Gnomesville, and the other gnome travelled with us back to Sydney, and now resides at the bottom of the garden.
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| G'Hal's Gnome G'Home |
Leaving Western Australia, we flew to Singapore, where our friends Wong and Toshiko showered us with hospitality. We did some of the touristy things, such as walking along Arab Street, went to the Zoo, etc. We also did some not-so touristy things like visiting the Sungei Buloh nature reserve, a small slice of the mangroves preserved for the migratory birds and reptiles (including crocodiles and an impressive water monitor that grows up to 2m in length). We spent a lot of time eating, drinking and talking with Wong & Toshiko -- including the best Yum Cha we've had for years. We saw the New Year in from Wong & Toshiko's living room, watching the fireworks over Singapore.
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| Best Yum Cha with Toshiko and Wong |
From Singapore, it is a 45 minute ferry ride to Batam island and Seow Juan's idyllic beach house. After this, our next stop was the bustle of Bangkok.
Bangkok was a blast. We managed to catch up with our friends Helen and Glen. Hal, in particular, enjoyed seeing his friends Sarah and Matthew. We travelled around Bangkok by river, overland and underground rail, taxis and on foot. We visited the Grand Palace, various Wats (temples) and met some lovely people. One of the highlights in Bangkok was having a number of foot massages which seemed to also include a back and shoulder massage towards the end. Picture Kim, Rus and Hal all lined up next to each other with a masseur each -- bliss! It did have a downside though. At one of the massages, Kim felt that the masseur twisted her arm and shoulder a little too quickly. The next day her arms was in quite a bit of pain. She thought that a muscle might have been pulled or a ligament torn. Returning to the same massage shop, the owner most apologetically insisted on giving her what turned into a three hour massage on the afflicted arm and shoulder. Eventually, Russell came and retrieved her so that we could all catch our flight to Chiang Mai.
The main attraction of going to Chiang Mai was to partake in an elephant ride in the jungle. In fact we ended up taking two separate day trips out of Chiang Mai -- one north and one south, where each of them involved an elephant ride through the jungle, poling a raft down low grade white water and trekking through the jungle to visit some of the hill tribes. All of which was great.
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| Elephants at Chiang Mai |
Unfortunately, Kim was still in pain with her arm. It seemed to be getting worse rather than better on a daily basis. Panadol had no effect and each night was peppered with excruciating pain. Eventually, the night before we were due to fly back to Australia, Kim went to a hospital in Chiang Mai. An obviously just-woken Thai doctor with broken English quickly diagnosed muscle inflammation and prescribed muscle relaxants and anti-inflammatories. Two days later back in Sydney, Kim visited the local GP who diagnosed suspected SHINGLES. This was confirmed by a swab sent to the laboratory.
In the last CCSS, we hinted at a possible American trip. Policies on travel were being tightened at UNSW due to the appalling financial crisis the university was going through. However, approval was finally given for Russell to attend the Artificial Life meeting in Boston. Kim and Hal decided to go too, paying their own way. Boston is a fascinating city with the birth of the American Revolution taking place here, as well as being home to some twenty odd universities including two of the world's top five (Harvard and MIT). The conference venue itself was in a hotel in the theatre district, a short walk from an underground station, and right at the start of the Freedom Trail, which takes one through such historical sites as Paul Revere's house, the church in which the revolution was planned, the site of the great molasses explosion and ending up at Bunker Hill, the site of the first major engagement of the revolution. Kim and Hal took advantage of the time there to visit several museums and other like attractions whilst Russell was attending the conference talks.
En route to Boston, we landed at Los Angeles, hired a car and drove to Yosemite, about a 6 hour drive north of L.A.. As you might imagine, we didn't arrive until dark, and crashed in one of the basic huts in a campground in Yosemite valley. We woke up to squirrels scampering through the undergrowth, and the magnificent mountain scenery of the valley. We heard sounds of a bear nosing around the campsite at night, but didn't see any, much to our disappointment.
After Yosemite, it was a 4 hour drive to Portola Valley in the San Francisco Bay Area to catch up with Greg Franklin, Hal's American-based godfather. It was our first visit to Greg's since our trip to Europe in 1992, and much had changed in the meantime -- a new pool, a new kitchen and the kids had grown up considerably. Hal enjoyed their company and the swimming pool (as always).
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| Greg Franklin and Kim |
From San Jose airport, we caught a plane to Boston, where we immediately hired a car and drove the historic Mohican way west through Massachusetts. We had arranged to meet our friend Nils Smeds in Manchester (Vermont that is - it seems most New England states have their own version of Manchester). Nils was working for IBM in Yorktown Heights, in New York state at the time -- alas we had just missed Karolina, who had passed through on a conference trip on the West Coast, and was now back in Sweden.
From Manchester, we drove through the Vermont countryside to Stowe. Vermont in autumn (or ``fall'' as the Americans call it) is famous for the colours of its leaves. A popular pastime at this time of the year is ``leaf-peeping''. Unfortunately, we were about two weeks too early for the real leaf-peeping season, but still saw glimpses of its impending bloom.
The attraction of Stowe for us was that it is approximately half way between Boston and Montreal, where we arranged to meet up with our friends Marcelline, Réjean, their son William and baby Mathilde drove from Montreal to meet us there.
Stowe itself is a quiet skiing village, whose main claim to fame is being the location where the von Trapp's (from the Sound of Music) ended up. Hal had been introduced to The Sound of Music by our friends Ross and Penny, and it had become a perennial favourite of his. Réjean is also of thespian tendencies, so the both he and Hal hammed it up all day, including getting everyone to do a rendition of ``So long, Farewell'' in the lobby of the von Trapp lodge. Hal got on very well with William, in spite of the lack of common language. Hal is now studying French, so maybe next time they meet, they'll have a little more than noises and sign language to communicate with.
After Stowe, we drove through New Hampshire, visiting a Shaker village. The Shakers were a puritanical religious community, but unlike the Amish had a love of technology. They held many hundreds of patents, had invented an early washing machine, and were the centre of a broom industry and of furniture (Shaker furniture is now widely sought after). Due to a lack of belief in marriage (men and women had separate quarters, and typically never mixed), and changing social conditions (most of the children were orphans), the sect has dwindled to only seven remaining Shakers still living. The village we visited had been abandoned, and is now a museum.
From New Hampshire, it was back to Massachusetts, Plymouth where the Pilgrim's landed and to Cape Cod. Cape Cod is where Eastern America have their holiday houses, the Kennedy compound for example being the Kennedy's family's mansion by the sea at Hyannis Port. Highlights for us were visiting the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, home of Marvin, the deep sea submersible the explored the wreck of the Titanic, and visiting the ``Gingerbread Houses'' on Martha's Vineyard, brightly coloured holiday cottages each one a more outrageous colour than the next, laid out higgledy-piggledy much as a temporary campsite is laid out.
Hal's school Clovelly Public School has an exchange programme with a similar school Eloi Franc in New Caledonia, a French-speaking nation in Polynesia, just two hours by air from Sydney. As a warmup, we hosted a 10 year old boy from Eloi Franc in 2005. Enthusiastic, a real chatterbox and English limited to ``Good morning'', ``Let's go!'' or ``Be quiet, 'al'', Pierre really put our French to the test. Fascinated by anything to do with computers, Pierre joined in the robotics programme we taught. In spite of the language barrier, he rapidly understood how to build the robots, and liased quite happily with the Aussie kids.
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| Pierre and Hal with a Lego Robot |
In 2006, Kim and Hal made the trip to Noumea, the capital of New
Caledonia. Unfortunately, due to differing regulations, the Australian
children
could not be billeted out like the New Caledonians are in
Sydney. Hal enjoyed attending classes at Eloi Franc, as well as a
number of other activities, such as snorkelling in the crystal clear
tropical waters. Kim and Hal met up with Pierre's family, on one
occasion going with them to an amazing treetops jungle adventure
trail. Pierre has since graduated from Eloi Franc, and is attending a
nearby lycée. Most of the exchange students coming to Clovelly
in 2005 were in their final year of primary school.
News flash! After 3 years of Kim trying to encourage Hal to play soccer, he finally decided to give it a go in 2005! He joined a team coached by the father of Liam, his best friend from Tigger's place child care. There is also another boy Mani whom Hal knew from Tigger's on the team, and Mani's dad, Ross was the manager. Hal enjoys playing the game, or more particularly enjoys the after game socialisation with the other boys. In 2006, Liam went with his family to live in England for several months during the soccer season, so Mani's dad Ross stepped into the coaching role. Kim stepped into the team manager role.
Hal's other sports tend to be more individual -- he's engaged in Tae Kwon Do, and doing quite well at it. He has now obtained his brown belt, which is the belt below black belt. He is swimming at a local swimming competition once a week, and we noticed the improvement recently when snorkelling at Rottnest Island -- we couldn't keep up with him! During summer he is doing Nippers, a junior life saving activity involving beach running, swimming and paddling. He does better in the water than out of it!
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| Hal and Russell Skiing |
In September 2005, we took him skiing for the first time, this time to Mount Selwyn, a relatively tame snowfield compared with Thredbo where we had been previously. In 2001, Hal had been somewhat reluctant to try skiing. This time he had a couple of lessons, and took to it with flourish, easily managing Selwyn's blue slopes. Russell was quite pleased that the skiing came back to him -- given that the last time he'd skied was ten years previously (see issue 6 for the disaster story therein), and he'd only ever done downhill skiing once before in 1991 (see issue 1). Kim decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and avoiding any further damage to her already permanently weak knee, instead traipsed around the slopes after the rest of the family, video camera in hand to capture every moment. Hal is keen to do it again, but 2006 proved too busy a year to get away.
Hal's ballet has continued to go from strength to strength. For a number of reasons, we were concerned that the ballet school which Hal had attended from the age of four was not giving him enough stimulation, so in early 2006, Kim took him along to try out a number of different schools. In his old ballet school, Hal had just completed Grade 1 classes. A number of the other instructors thought he was quite capable of performing at grade 3 level. He went to a well-renowned school located in the Northern suburbs for a few weeks, but eventually the peak hour traffic through the harbour tunnel proved a killer. Eventually, we found a school closer to home, founded by an RAD examiner. We took him to her to determine which level he should really be in. At the time she was teaching a grade 4 class, but not grade 3, but suggested Hal should join in the class so she could see what he was like. At the end of the class, she said ``he's quite comfortable in grade 4''! She also offered him a part scholarship, which made the decision easy for us. Last year, Hal did his grade 3 exams in May, obtaining a Distinction, and then did grade 4 in October passing with high merit (two marks off a Distinction). He did three years ballet in one, and more importantly -- he loves the new school and the challenges!
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| Ballet Rehearsals |
During 2004, we took Hal (aged 6) to see the stage version of ``The Lion King''. As with anything theatrical, Hal was rapt. In the previous year, Hal had won a voucher for a CD in a dancing competition, and we thought it might best be put towards a copy of the Lion King music. One Thursday afternoon after school, Kim took Hal to pick up the CD. Once home, Hal listened to it, reading the words. The following afternoon, he put on a full one-hour choreographed performance of the Lion King -- with all the different characters acted out! Over the coming months, he performed this show many times in front of guests. We were all awestruck!. At a recent children's competition for performing arts (Double Bay BrightStars), he performed a piece from the Lion King, and was selected as a finalist. Unfortunately, the finals coincided with him being in New Caledonia, but interestingly the competition was won by a class mate of Hal's, playing piano and singing a James Blunt song. In all, four kids from Hal's school made the finals, an interesting reflection on the talent there. Since Hal has been agitating to get a musical staged at school, this is important.
Hal has also been branching into other performing arts. In 2006, he began learning piano, and this year began learning and playing clarinet in the school band. He was selected for a year 3 choir at school, and sang some songs at nursing homes before Christmas. And we were also very proud of him representing the school in public speaking on the topic ``What it is to be Australian'', coming runner up in the district round.
In December 2005, en route to an artificial life conference held in Sydney, Russell performed a spectacular somersault over the handlebars on his push bike landing on the pointy bit of his shoulder and tearing the AC ligament. The offender was a small piece of asphalt across the path, a temporary covering of a trench for something like power or water servicing a building site. The bike careened into a nearby car waiting for traffic lights to change. To add to the drama, Russell found he couldn't get up, so an ambulance was called by a kindly motorist who had stopped to assist, and he was carted off on a stretcher.
Once in the emergency room, with the shoulder and neck X-rayed, and with cries of ``I'm feeling much better now...'' (morphine had kicked in by that stage), they kicked him out of the bed saying he was not sick enough for ER. With his arm in a sling, he took the next bus to the conference venue, missing about three hours of the conference in total.
In the meantime, Kim arrived home to three answering machine messages -- the first from ER before anything was known, the second after the X-ray results and the third from the bus on the way to the conference!
Other than this rather dramatic incident, we are all fit and well. Kim managed to lose a spectacular 15 kg in 2005, and kept it off for the last couple of years. Most of the weight loss was initially attributed to the Atkins diet. Unfortunately, it also raised her cholesterol levels through the roof, so after six months she modified the diet by adding more fruit and vegetables and cutting out the fattier components. After going off Atkins, she lost a further three kg, so the modified diet was still effective, and the cholesterol level declined. The other thing that has helped is she started walking to and from school with Hal, a distance of some 1-1.5 km each day. She has been actively promoting ``walk to school days'' at Hal's school, once a month, but helps raise awareness about getting out of the car for journeys where it makes sense.
Hal has had a stellar year at school having had the same teacher for both year 2 and year 3. UNSW run annual competitions for years 3 onwards, and students at Clovelly school had the option of sitting tests in Science, English and Mathematics. In the Science test, Hal gained a High Distinction, one of only two for the whole school (the other being a year 4 girl). In English, he gained a Distinction. He is clearly up there with the best in a very bright class. In year 4 he continued to do well, repeating the High Distinction in Science, and Distinctions in Mathematics and English.
In 2005, he sat a year 3 entrance exam for the selective school Sydney Grammar, and was offered a placed. After much deliberation, we decided to leave Hal at Clovelly school, as he was happy there, and we had just set in motion Robotics and Noumea was on the cards.
Kim has thrown herself into school things, being a vice president of the parents and citizens for the past two years, and agitating for gifted and talented matters. In 2005, she instigated a robotics programme for year 2 with Russell not fully employed at the time, offered him as ``teacher'' of the Robotics course. Kim also provided invaluable crowd control. The school had Lego construction kits with 4 programmable bricks that control the motors and sensors of the robots. This programme had the kids constructing a fairly basic vehicle which they programmed to do obstacle avoidance and tracking. It proved very popular, with about half of year two signing up, and about 30 kids taking the course. Last year, Kim managed to expand the programme to include years 3 and 4. Kim found a female engineer who is now teaching robotics at several schools, and she took several groups of kids to a Junior robotics competition featuring dancing robots to tunes of the kids' choice. One group (the Elvis bot) made it to the finals -- pretty good for a first attempt. Thanks to Kim, Robotics is now part of the curriculum of Hal's school.
In the meantime in 2006, Kim mentored a team of kids to take part in Tournament of the Minds, in which a select group of kids researched the topic of ``Treaty'', wrote and performed a short play on the topic. As is always the case with these things, the kids had an absolute ball, thanks to Kim's dynamism and input. Tournament of the Minds ran again this year, under the instigation of Kim, and this year she mentored two teams of students. As you can imagine, this takes enormous amounts of time and energy.
As mentioned in issue 11, Russell has been spending a bit of time in philosophical chats over the internet with a bunch of highly educated and interesting people. Some of these conversations lead to some interesting insights which resulted in publishable work. One of these was a paper deriving quantum mechanics, our most fundamental theory of matter, from what is basically a theory of observation. It would seem that even if reality were completely randomly generated, it would still follow the rules of quantum mechanics -- a somewhat disturbing notion to scientists who spend their lives assuming that science describes something ``out there''. This paper was eventually published in 2004, after running the gauntlet of critical referees. One referee put it ``I think the paper is wrong, but I can't work out where the mistake is''. Somewhat emboldened by this, and also finding himself in the position of explaining many of the chat groups topics to newcomers to the list, he decided he'd like to write a book exploring the topics raised on the list, with background information and links into the established philosophical literature.
The books premise is best summed up by a metaphor, first described by Jorg Borges in his 1932 story ``The Library of Babel''. The Library of Babel is a fantastic collection of books, most of which are complete gibberish. A careful observer might notice that adjacent books differ from each other by just one letter, and that all books are of the same length. All possible books (less than a certain number of pages) written in the English language can be found somewhere in the library. As are all possible books in written in French and other languages employing the Latin alphabet. What a wonderful find -- the sum of human knowledge is contained in this library.
However, how can you find the real ``Romeo and Juliet'' amongst all the copies that contain errors of various sorts? The only way is to have your own copy of Romeo and Juliet, and meticulously compare the books letter by letter. In short, there is no way to find any knowledge in the library you didn't already know. Far from being the font of all knowledge, the library is useless -- a thing of zero information.
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| Theory of Nothing |
In Russell's Theory of Nothing, he considers a collection of all possible realities like the Library of Babel. The reality we experience is selected from this complete collection by some unknown mechanism. Just as the Library of Babel as a whole has no information, this complete collection of realities is really just nothing.
Whilst the mechanism for selecting reality is unknown (probably random), the selected reality must at very least be compatible with our existence as observers in that reality. This principle is known as the Anthropic Principle, and Russell argues that much of physics, if not all of physics can be derived from it.
At the time he was thinking about writing the book, his long service leave at UNSW became available, however his job did not allow him to take time off. When his contract expired, his long service leave was paid out, so then came the opportunity to work on the book. Four months after finishing with UNSW, he had his first draft finished, which he circulated on the internet for comments. Alas, it was not the sort of book that interested mainstream book publishers -- there is no money in books by unknown authors requiring some technical ability to understand. Stephen Hawking famously said that his publisher told him that every equation he included would halve his book sales. Russell's book is therefore never destined to be a best seller. The book is not very technical -- as the subject is so interdisciplinary almost nobody would have the technical knowledge to understand it in full. Instead, it is written at an undergraduate level, with references to technical papers for specific points for those interested. The book falls into the crack between the pricy low volume technical monographs and the cheaper high volume popular science books. So after acquiring a collection of rejection letters, Russell found a solution to getting the book into print. Booksurge, an Amazon.com owned company allow authors to self-publish print-on-demand through the Amazon retail and wholesale channels. It can be very inexpensive if you a provide camera-ready electronic manuscript and cover art. The company also offers packages to help formatting, editing and cover design.
Since the book is of a technical nature, Russell didn't feel the provided editorial services would be of much help, and his academic colleagues were unfortunately too busy to help much. He got some feedback on the draft manuscript from the internet discussion group, which was invaluable, however the best thing was leaving the book to sit for a period of five months. When he returned to the manuscript, it was with a fresh eye, and it was obvious which parts had to be rewritten. So after a little more than a year, Russell's book is now available through Amazon's website. True to predictions, it is not a bestseller, but it looks like selling enough copies to cover costs. More importantly is whether enough of the right sort of people read it and are impressed enough to think about contents. And, the book has been translated into Swedish! Lennart Nilsson read the draft copy circulating on the Internet, and was sufficiently impressed to translate the book and sell the Swedish version through his own publishing company. We were able to provide our friend Christian with a copy for his milestone birthday in 2006. Relying on Christian's word, at least we know that the Swedish is readable!
In 2005 we purchased Greg's share of 7 Gordon Ave. No mean feat when you know the price of Sydney real estate. State government coffers still, however, ended up with a tidy sum out of the deal.
We had already made some minor changes to the house, such as ripping up the carpets and polishing all the floorboards, repairing corroded window frames, and installing an open fireplace (marble mantelpiece still to come), but now our attention has come to more major works. The kitchen is in dire need of replacement, so we're in the process of planning for extending the kitchen and adding a casual eating area with views over the bay. We also need to do some remedial work to the garden, so we're also contemplating adding a pool. However, we don't at this stage, really know how much all of this is going to cost! And as many of you will know, rennovating tends to have a life of its own, so stay tuned...
To all of you, we close with our wishes. Kim, Russell and Hal.