Orchids and other “Flowers”

Now what I know about plants could be written in crayon on the back of a postage stamp, but I am reliably informed that this first shot is of an orchid. Notice how the absence of soil/compost does not appear to have affected it's flowering capabilities – this one lives above fish pond number 1 out the back by the swimming pool. Gets enough moisture out of the atmosphere for it's needs – augmented by the odd downpour as it is half exposed to the elements in this position.

Here is a bad close up of it.



The next two are growing on the balcony outside the office, they might be orchids or maybe not – as if I would know.




This last one lives on top of the bar out the back by fish pond number 1, it is allegedly worth a lot of money or will be when it grows up – pretty sure that it is not an orchid but more than that is beyond me.

View From The Balcony

Now here is a rare sight, some blue sky looking out from the "smoking" balcony outside the upstairs office in lil' bro's hoose. The view looks south from the hills in Sentul down towards Jakarts.

It would be pretty tranquil were it not for the major construction work being performed on the house next door, every day from shortly after 07:00 until around 17:30 with only a break for a meal around midday. This goes on seven days a week and there are no health and safety inspections, closest thing to a hard hat would be a baseball cap or woolly hat, they work in bare feet or with a pair of flip flops.

The scaffolding is very Heath Robinson and assembled from whatever pieces of wood they could lay their hands on at the time, while there are sounds of the occasional power tool or cement mixer the majority sounds are of hammers or pick axes chipping away at something.

Planning regulations are applied and decided after the build has been completed, we assume that they are extending the property but have no idea how it will turn out.

Looking South East from the balcony:



Inside view of the office:

Happy Birthday Spam

The first unsolicited email message was sent 30 years ago today to 400 “lucky” recipients on the West coast of the USA. Since that humble beginning it has mushroomed into a million dollar business with an estimated 100 billion plus spam mails being sent every day.

I had a Compuserve account from a long time back and when I finally closed it 3 years ago it was collecting 10 or more spams each day. My broadband ISP back home has much better filters and in 3 years I have less than a dozen spam mails, and my gmail account has yet to deliver one in 8 months of use.

Could well be tempting fate by disclosing this but reckon that I am covering myself by sending spam birthday greetings.

You can read the full story here.