I booked an evening flight thinking and hoping that Deeyan would sleep through the first leg which is fourteen hours to Dubai. From there on if he is awake for the seven hours to Manchester we would manage between us.

We arrived at the airport in plenty of time, and got a bassinet for both flights, but found that one of us would be sitting elsewhere for the second flight… oh well. Put Deeyan in his sling and wasted three hours walking around the shops during which time, he happily fell asleep on us. We boarded the plane with a sleeping baby but had to wake him to strap him into us as the bassinet wasn’t available until the plane was in the air.  Luckily for us he was too sleepy to care at this point.  After a little cry he went back to sleep on me. Flight got underway and the bassinet came out, I was relieved to have him off me but it took some doing to get him to fall asleep in it as a TV screen right above it was shining straight into his face… USEFUL!  Glad that he was settled, we buckled down for some kip too, to be fresh for part two of the flight.  Luckily for Deeyan he had his favourite blanket with him which happens to be pretty big as it was absolutely freezing on the plane.  Other passengers were wrapping up in the blankets provided and getting up every so often to switch off the vents, only to find they were off already! After the initial freeze we then had two lovely old ladies seated directly behind us who continued to talk out loud in Russian.  I thought they would get over the excitement of travelling together, soon enough. Boy was I wrong.  Anyway, at this point, the captain decides to put on the seat belt signs and announces that he is expecting turbulence. Ignoring this I went back to sleep, only to be awoken by a stewardess, informing me that my baby could not sleep in a bassinet when the seat belt sign was lit.  Getting rather annoyed at this point we took Deeyan out, only to make him cry and wake up the rest of the plane.  It took a while to settle him and get him to sleep again.  Once the seat belt signs were off, we put him back in the bassinet.  HUGE mistake!  Seat belt sign came on and this time I took him out and kept him on my lap for the rest of the flight, approximately ten hours. When the meals were served, we asked that ours be bought out separately as i was holding my baby, but the crew said this was not possible.  Even if he was awake they would not accommodate us as he was is not allowed in the bassinet unless asleep for safety reasons. So we used the bassinet to store my tray and once Rum had eaten I would use his tray holder.  The old ladies continued on their mission to annoy everyone to death with their banter and my buttocks were seriously getting numb.

Second half of the flight was a further nightmare.  There was no microwave, all food that needed heating was put in hot water and a screaming baby isn’t going to understand his food is getting heated.  The staff would take so long to answer calls that I ended up giving Deeyan cold milk and cold food. I turned them away when they did decide to bother ansering my call, even when Deeyan was hollering at full capacity. We were lucky enough to get moved to where there were three seats, so Deeyan had a seat of his own to mess about in when he was awake.  We didn’t bother with the bassinet for this flight and were better off for it. Deeyan was super good, I only had to walk him around the back of the flight to keep him entertained and it was only until the last 10 minutes that he had had enough.  Arrived in Manchester safe and sound, Deeyan slept in the car most of the way home.

The flight back home to Melbourne is all a blur for me. It was horribly hot on the plane.  So much that I stripped Deeyan down to his vest. The staff were there usual helpful selves, answering calls as and when they could.  I didn’t bother premixing baby milk this time, took seperate formula and asked for warm water.  I took foods that he could eat cold and didn’t require heating.  The less I saw of the cabin crew the better.  Deeyan however was pretty distressed on the last fourteen hour stretch.  He couldn’t sleep as it was too hot, stuffy, TV in his face, getting taken in and out of bassinet, etc etc.  At one point he was just screaming and there was nothing we could do for him and not one cabin crew asked if they could do anything for us.  They did come and ask us if he wanted his photo taken.  What baby who is screaming is going to want a photo taken and why they hell would I want a momento of the damned flight?  Not sure who wanted off the plane more, me or Deeyan? All credit to the lady who was sitting with us.  She didnt get

Anyway, jet lag! We travelled from Australia to the UK, stopping in Dubai, with a total travel time of 24hours. On the way there, Deeyan was fantastic. No jet lag what so ever.  He stayed up the whole day and slept through the night with a little controlled crying.The only issues he gave us for sleep were adjusting to new environments.

Travelling easterward, though was a whole other issue.  Sleeping every two to three hours, being awake through the night and taking over an hour of controlled crying to resettle (which would normally have taken only ten minutes).

Day 1 – he was up all night, going to bed at 4am (which was UK 7pm).

Day 2 – he woke up for 2pm and I carried out his usual routine of two two hours naps during the day and bed was at 1am

Day 3 – he woke up for 11 am, usual two naps during the day and I was hoping the trend for tonight would be 11 am sleep. Unfortunately he was up till 1 am again.

Day 4 – usual two naps during the day and sleep time was at 10pm but he woke at 2 am to play.  We controlled cried him for an hour and he slept till 11:30 the next day.

Day 5 – two naps during the day and sleep time for 9pm, he was up at 11, controlled crying of an hour was not successful at all. So played quietly in his room until 1 am at which point he went to sleep but awoke for 8:30!

Day 6 – 8.30 start I started to think this could be a good thing but he didn’t sleep well during the day at all.  His morning two hour nap was only 45 min and his late afternoon nap didn’t happen until 4pm. He went to sleep at 9pm begging for his bed and slept through the whole night. Waking up a couple of times but nodding off again, he awoke at 10:45am!

Day 7 – The final day and it was a great day.  Back to normal routing.  Eating heaps, good 2-3 hour naps during the day, bed at 7pm and not awake until 8am!  What a huge relief.

What we learned:

- Do not control cry your baby. He is not tired and so will not sleep but just cry and cry, as he won’t understand why you are forcing him to sleep.

- Take him/her out as much as possible during the day to get them in the sun so that their body clock adjusts itself.

- If they wake at night, keep them in their room and play with them quietly.

- Feed them as and when they need to be fed.  I found that Deeyan was eating ridiculous amounts at all hours.   Only until the third night did I stop all night feeding.

In hind sight I think it may have helped if we had landed in Australia at night.  That way Deeyan would have slept through the night and hopefully woken up fresh for the morning.  We landed at 7am and he slept till 4pm, leaving us with a wide awake baby at night. The week after we landed in Oz was so difficult that I don’t think I will ever travel twenty four hours on a plane with a baby again! Its simply too much for everyone.

I ended up replacing the conventional spinning hard drive with a 30Gb solid state drive with windows 7 home premium 64bit

RESULTS

Original Specification
Base score 4.6 (see fig 1)
Boot time to ‘user’ screen 50.8 seconds
Shutdown from ‘user’ screen 26.4 seconds

Original Spec.

Fig 1

Upgraded Specification
Base score 4.6 (see fig 2)
Boot time to ‘user’ screen 22.3 seconds
Shutdown from ‘user’ screen 7.3 seconds

Upgraded Spec.

Fig 2

Hard disc Capacity (actual space is 27.8GB)
Due to all my files being housed on my NAS drive I didn’t think I required a large SSD drive and I could only afford the 30GB SSD drive.  Minimum software was installed as I was tight on space but this is pretty much all I use on my Laptop

The follow software was installed:-

Windows 7 Home Premium
Office 2007 (word, excel, outlook)
Live MSN
Security Essentials
Skype
Acrobat Reader
WinRAR
Flickr Uploader
Google Chrome
FFDshow

Windows 7 used about 12Gb after updates.  I now have 5.8GB Free

Costing
Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit OEM $129.95 AUD
30GB Kingston SSD Drive – V series $129.95 AUD
Delivery $14.99 AUD

Purchased from Shopping Square (very slow at responding to emailing and delivery was over 16 working days.  I would not recommend this store)

CONCLUSION

The performance of my Dell has improved and is now incredibly quite.  Yes the base score has remained 4.6 but this was due to the graphics card.  Look closer at the score table and you will notice all other sub scores have improved due to the OS optimizing the hardware.

The main improvement is the boot speed which I am very happy with and I have noticed that it is a little cooler on my lap.

Tip
Windows 7 did not install the driver for my graphics card.  I had to download and install from Nvidia

The folks have been and gone and we had a fantastic time with them.  They livened the house up, did a grand job on the garden (with a little supervision) and kept us entertained with their stories of home.  I was so worried about them at the airport thinking they would be bringing at least one of them out on a wheelchair.  I was so wrong though, they were the last to come out but they came bouncing out! If anything Rum and I looked terrible, as it was almost 1 in the morning.

The garden is almost complete, with most of the work done, Rum and I can handle the rest.  Just decking, barbecue and patio left to do before the next batch of visitors.  Dad couldn’t wait to get started on it.  Any normal day he doesn’t wake up till the afternoon, but with an empty canvas waiting for him he was up at 8 almost everyday. Took him shopping for plants and he returned with lemon, orange and mango trees.

The garden project took a little longer than anticipated. When taking the dads to the shop they always brought less and not more of what was needed.  So instead of going back and forth, which was not a short trip, we left them at home and brought heaps extra materials.  They just couldn’t get their heads around buying extra and returning what isn’t used.

Once the vegetable patch was ready we went looking for veggies.  First lot of tomatoes died thanks to the Craigieburn winds but plenty more stuff planted to look forward to.  We’ve been lucky in that it has been raining since they left, the grass is getting greener and we’ve planted more tomatoes and sweetcorn. We’ve also added two little garden gnomes to watch over it in their absence.

We didn’t make them work the whole time they were here. We did take them out and about, as far as they would let us.  “How far is it?”, was the first question they would ask us.  My mom would be asleep on the way back and the furthest we went was 40 min! They did enjoy Victoria market, enough to make two trips, although the moms left out the meat section altogether.   We were also lucky that the sun was out when we took them to the beach and the animals put on a good show at Melbourne Zoo.

I was lucky enough to share another birthday with them and it was nice to have a fathers day too. I am putting together a photo DVD for them so you can all share the fun loving memories that they left behind.

I haven’t really been back on the bike due to the weather and lack of motivation but this will do the trick.  I have until the 18th October to get into shape and learn to ride on the busy roads.  It will be a beautiful and scenic ride as the full 100Km will be along side the Bay, lets hope the weather is good and not windy.  If anyone has any helpful tips please pass them on.

Feel free to check out the route I think i will get some road tyres for my bike just to get less friction on the road.  “Every little helps”  You’ll see that i’m not acutually doing the full ride, 250Km is more than what i can endure; maybe next year for that.

This is a yearly event to raise money this year we will be raising money for the Smith Family who help disadvantaged Aussie kids.  Feel free to sponsor me

We are yet to see a White-tailed or a Huntsman.  My friend, Mere, tells me, “You will know when you see a Huntsman!” After reading Wikipedia, I think I can wait forever to see one of them! They are so big that I would be too scared to even step on one.  Not even sure it would get sucked up by the vacuum cleaner.

We’ve also been introduced to cockroaches out here.  Only really seen one type so far, not too big but too many legs and those antennae… shudder! The worst thing is it will climb anything and anywhere and on top of that the little sh** jumps! Again though, these can be controlled with sprays, so luckily I only see dead ones.

Moths here are on another level altogether. They are so damned big and they flutter noisely.  We went to sleep one night and all of a sudden we heard something around our heads.  I got up like a shot as I knew what it was.  Good thing about moths is they are pretty dumb. I put the light on in the hallway, it went out, I shut the door and left it there till the morning.  Haven’t seen one since, don’t know how it snuck in.

I know In the UK we see one spider a year, a moth or two but never a cockroach.  Well they do take getting used to but they leave you alone and you do get used to them. Never thought I would say it, but as I have seen so many now they are getting boring.  I’ll find out when theres a Huntsman in my bed! Oh and I am not dettering anyone from visiting… you will be safe in the house I promise

Battery operated screwdrivers have been around for over 15 years.  Since their debut they have come a long way, reduction in size and weight, variable torque settings, ergonomics and more importantly battery life.

Whilst browsing in Bunnings, the equivalent to B&Q; I came across the Bosch IXO cordless screwdriver.  It was the packaging that drew attention towards the quaint stylish driver.  The driver and its accessories are packaged in a tin box (18 x 18 x 14cm) however this is not why purchased the item.

The driver weighs approximately 300g and fits like a glove.  The soft rubber grip allows the user to be comfortable and confident when using the driver with his/hers left or right hand.  For additional support you can easily hold the driver with both hands.  With the aid of arrows that light up the user is always aware which way the driver is rotating.  When the trigger is half and fully pressed an LED will come on at the front of the driver to illuminate the fastener.  Nice idea when you working inside a cupboard.

The main reason I purchased this driver was because of the attachments that accompanied the driver.  The driver can be used as it is or with the adjustable torque setting attachment or with the angle driver head.  The heads are easily attached by removing the plastic cap and clipping the attachment, they can be removed with a simple twist and pull action.  Torque settings are necessary when using small diameter screws; if you’re not careful you will thread or damage the screw head.

The set includes 10 fastener heads: 1 x flat, 2 x hex, 2 x torx, 2 x cross and 2 x which are all housed in a plastic clip that can be removed from the docking station.  The docking station which is also the charger can sit on the work bench or mounted on a wall.

This is a nice piece of kit that should be a part of everyone’s toolbox, a must for those enthusiastic IKEA future lovers.  It is clear that this driver has been designed with some thought, comfortable for men, woman and children to use; from the amateur DIY person to the professional tradesperson.  The only compliant I have is that Bosch should have included an extension piece for the fastener heads.  I paid $79 for this, ten dollars less and think it would have been a bargain.

I have until the 22nd February to get in shape.  I’m not that worried because it is a family event for all ages so I think we have about 5 hours to complete the course.  Accompanying me on this trek will be Asar who will have is work cut out for him motivating me.  Hopefully we can make some time and get some training session together.

If anyone would like to sponsor me and help the MS society follow is this link and click DONATE

Larger image of Cinder Cone Mountain Bike

We had a telephone line connected with Telstra (BT equivalent) just so we could have ADSL broadband but Telstra said the infrastructure has not been installed in Craigieburn just yet and they do not know how long it will take.  So not having the option of ADSL we decided to go to the latest method of data transferring.  G3 network, this enables you to access the internet via a SIM card which connects to your computer with the use of a modem (usually the size of a USB flash drive) again we do not get coverage from Vodafone or Optus.

We’ve built a beautiful home here in Craigieburn but I think we might as well have dug a hole and lived in a cave!  Telstra have a huge monopoly here and they have the government over a barrel.  They are taking their time with building new data infrastructure and updating existing lines.  Australia really is about 10 years behind the UK when it comes to broadband.  Until we catch up we have to be prepared to pay many hundreds of dollars for a slow connection speed and limited bandwidth.

Luckily, Dal and I will have access to the web at work to quickly check our mail whilst looking over our shoulders to see if the boss is watching ? So you won’t hear from us until we do get a connection at home and there won’t be much happening on the blog.  Sorry guys but we are officially disconnected from the planet.

We went into the second half with a 3-0 lead and one injury to Andrea (not including Dal who was already injured).  Orange Meanies came levelling it to 3-3! Rathan and Andrea pulled of some beautiful goals and when the final whistle blew it was 6-4.  The last 4 mintues were the longest ever, standing on the side line! Goal and player of the match goes to Andrea.  Well done Troubled Strangers… lets get it on for next season.

Our Player Manager Jade could not be with us this season but she kept a watch with her MSN team talk   It was much appreciated! This ones for you Jade. “They think its all over.  It is now!”