I thought I might as well start catching up on two weeks’ worth of news, and the first News for 2018, on a Saturday afternoon since the noise of the generator running tends to preclude any idea of a quiet and peaceful time doing anything else.
At about 11 p.m. on Thursday night the power went off and so far, at 3:17 p.m. on Saturday, it is still off. Reports are that a tree went down on the power line about 30km east of Mount Hagen, but after that another fault occurred in Chimbu Province, further east again down the highway.
Police are reported to have had to accompany power workers to the Chimbu location after local landowners blocked access and demanded compensation. Gggrrrr. The compensation demands over things like this hold PNG back in their own version of the Dark Ages, along with their witch hunts and sorcery killings.
Anyway, we are glad to have the generator whirring away and keeping fridge and freezer temperatures down, and to allow us to recharge computers, phones and other electronic gadgets, but it will be nice to have peace and quiet along with a return of power in due course.
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Nicki didn’t sleep well on Wednesday night, possibly because of the noise from the club, which still disturbs the sleep of local residents in the area. The effect of a sleep deficit were unfortunately evident on Thursday when she locked the keys in the car when she went shopping, and later on reversed into a fence pole as she manoeuvred out of one of our compounds where she’d been visiting somebody.
I guess that cars have bumpers to protect against events like this, but they do look better when they’re straight! Fortunately there’s nothing that requires repairing.
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It’s amazing how many cables of different varieties are necessary to put the synthetic flight trainer together. Two mice (or are they mouses when applied to a computer?), the rudder pedal unit, control console, avionics box, and a software key fill up the USB slots. A VGA cable connects one monitor, and a DVI-D the other – this was a variety of cable I hadn’t come across before and I had to order an 8m version to replace the supplied 1.8m one that was too short.
I sometimes think that it would be easier if everything was wireless, which is the way the world is going. Then I feel concerned that we will all end up microwaved. Maybe cables are safer after all, providing you don’t trip over them!
Thus far I haven’t managed to get the sound part of the device working, so will solicit help from our IT department and/or avionics engineer next week. After which I will tidy up all the cables so that the likelihood of tripping over them is reduced, and also so that when our cleaner comes in to wash the floor with overly liberal amounts of water, nothing electric gets washed at the same time.
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My other primary task this week has been rewriting the Crew Resource Management course which I’ll be running next week, i.e. w/b 22nd Jan. I ran the course in September and didn’t have time to make the major revision I wanted to; this time I should have the revision completed. I hope that it will make a substantial improvement, and also make it much more relevant to what we do, covering topics like situational awareness, leadership and teamwork, decision making, error management from a practical and less theoretical perspective.
One topic that particularly interests me is culture. MAF is particularly cross-cultural and works cross-culturally day in and day out, so I’ve included it in CRM courses for years. The aviation industry finally caught up with MAF and it is now part of at least the European CRM syllabus.
The syllabus covers national, professional and organisational culture, and how that impacts flight crew interactions and the safety of flight operations. So far they have not included generational culture, which again I have done for a while, and which, with national culture, I place ahead of professional and organisational cultures in terms of importance.
It is interesting to have a look at key social and international events, attitudes to work, family, religion, money, technology and other topics between generations – my parents, the veterans or traditionalists; myself, a so-called boomer; then the Gen X and on to the Gen Y or millennials.
Attitudes across the generations are poles apart, so it’s not surprising when somebody like myself has a strong difference of opinion of what is important with a person in their mid- or early-20s.
Once upon a time generational attitudes were very slow to change; these days they change with each decade, or at least every 20-25 years.
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And talking about generations, it’s nice having a couple of little people staying on the compound at the moment. Tim & Laura Neufeld are some of our newest arrivals, Tim has just started his pilot training. They have Hannah, who is 4, and Ethan who is 6 months. Next door are Luke & Catherine Newell, just returned from leave, with little Lydia who is a bit over one year.
Hannah loves kicking a ball around, so after work another grandfather (a temporary resident of our compound who has started Tim’s training) and myself have enjoyed playing with her.
Meanwhile, Lydia loves carrying a floor mop around wherever she goes. It is usually kept outside their front door, but almost every time she comes out she collects her mop and walks around with it. I’m sure she will be a great help to her mother in due course!
Yes, it’s obvious and true, I miss my grandkids!
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Nicki is hand-making some bread as the bread machine would place quite a high demand on the power supply. It appears that there is a consensus to go for a meal at the Sweet Spot, a local restaurant, tonight so that others can do the cooking and washing up. Sounds like a good plan!
I hope that you have a quiet and peaceful week undisturbed by generators, loud rock-and-roll music, thumping bass drums, drunken hollering or anything similar. Despite all of the above, when I went for a run this morning I was greeted very warmly and friendlily by everybody I met, and was appreciated when I helped push a Land Cruiser in an attempt (unsuccessful unfortunately) to bump start it.
