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I think last night was the first night I really slept right through the night since I got back from over seas. I felt very refreshed this morning.

I was amazed to discover that you can now buy 0.4Tb hard disk drives. How much longer before we start measuring hard disk drives by the terabyte?

Yesterday we ventured to Haberfield. For those in the dark, Haberfield is the real little Italy of Sydney. I know you can find all the glitzy expensive Italian restaurants in Leichard, but real Italians do their shopping in Haberfield.
My original plan was to get up early and head down there on my own or with Tate and just quickly buy some stuff for the bbq later that night, but as everyone was up, we (Hind, Tate, Zac and Tamara and Maissa and me) decided to go together, have some breakfast there and get the shopping at the same time.
When we arrived, there was this very nice looking cafe which we decided to have breakfast in, but we needed a slightly bigger table in the window to fit us all, so we just moved one of the tables, but the waitress barked “you can’t move that table, there won’t be room to get through”. So we asked her where we could sit and the only option she gave us was in the back of the restaurant. We looked, changed our minds and decided to sit outside. Once we got outside we decided unanimously that the hag of a waitress had put us all off and we went across the road for some awesome bacon and eggs. I know its not very italian, but they did include an italian sausage on the plate.
Anyway, we wandered around after breakfast and bought some shopping including some lovely white fluffy ricotta cheese, some freshly greated parmesan, some delicious tomatoes, cuecumbers and basil, and some lovely italian sausages which we cooked up on the bbq that night. I have to say they were realy bloody good and I think I’m going to have to go to Haberfield next weekend to get some more.
Oh… that reminds me, on the same night, I finaly used up the last of the charcoal I bought ages ago. Thats like 20kg of charcoal gone in a few months. I must get some more.

I’m not sure where I got this desire from, but since we got back from over seas, I have had the urge to grow tomatoes on our balcony. So today, we went to the hardware shop and bought the necessary equipment and a grafted tomato plant. Apparantly, the grafted ones are much better. It’s a Might Red veriety (how can you go wrong with a name like that?) We bought a huge self watering pot for it, and some nice big bamboo steaks to support it when it gets a little bigger, and then I planted it this evening. It looks kind of cute, the little tomato plant in its huge pot, but I’m sure it will grow pretty big.

Last night I tried to start up the lantern to show Ed, but once the blow torch was going, and heating up the vaporiser, the cracks in the glass just started to get bigger. I didn’t think it was safe to proceed so I turned off the blowtorch. I’ll be going to the lantern supply shop on Saturday to hopefully get parts for it.

This is a photo of the lantern working.

Since we got back, Maissa and I have been wandering around in this kind of post travel depression. I’m not quite sure why we are both feeling it. Maybe it’s a kind of culture shock? or maybe its a combination of jet lag and having to face going back to work and getting back into the grind?
Whatever it is, it’s been effecting both of us. We have been going up and down like yoyos. Unpacking was a major stumbling block for us and to top it off, the bloody crap water heater has sprung a leak while we were away and had gently moistened all the boxes we kept in the cupboard where the heater is, nicely incubating some sort of black fungus that grew all over everything..

As night fell tonight, I was looking forward to having another go with the pressure lantern. This time, I wanted to try the slow light method, which is supposed to be a little more gentle, and requires less pumping. Basicaly, you fill this special resevoir with metho and light it and let it burn out, then do it again, and this time, before it compleetly goes out, you turn the valve on to let the kerosene start flowing.
The only problem for me was the metho appears to have over heated the knob and melted it a little bit so it no longer turns the shaft of the valve. Of course, I didn’t realise this until it was too late. I tried to light it by adding a little more metho, lighting the resevoir again and then turning the valve with pliers. But I think by the time I got it going again, the evaporator part had cooled down too much and the top of the lantern burst into flames, indicating liquid kerosene was coming out (instead of vapours). Then just to top it off, the glass cracked from over heating *sigh*. I’m not very happy.

This is a cool bit of history about the development of pressure lanterns.

When we were in Syria, I saw pressure lanterns for sale and I realised that that is what I needed to make my life complete. So I asked around and they seemed to be going for around AU$20. Maissa was a little surprised that I wanted but insisted I wait until we get back to Lebanon as we would be able to buy one there, and her mum might even have one we could have.

When we got back to Lebanon, Maissa’s mum said that she had just thrown them all out because they never used them any more so it was off to the markets to get one.
We eventually found one that looked ok. It looked new, but as though it has been sitting in the market for about 5 years before someone bought it. Once I got it, I was itching to try it out but I knew I would have to wait until we got home.
Today I finally had a play with it. I put the mantle on it, filled it with kerosene, and tried to work out how to light the thing. It didn’t come with any instructions so I had to guess. After fiddling around with it for a while I realised that there was little hope of me working it out and so I resorted to searching the Internet.
I found that the lamp I have is a Chinese copy of a Petromax without the top reflector bit ( I supposed i could actually photograph mine, but I can’t be bothered). Anyway, after much reading, I discovered a few hints on how to light the thing. Mine has a rapid preheater feature, which basicaly squirts raw kerosene up into the glass chamber to heat the evaporator stage. I tried to get that going, but it just wouldn’t light. I realised too that my pressure guage is not working. Upon reading more, I found that it would require about 30-40 pumps to bring it up to pressure for the rapid heater to work, and would require pumping while the rapid heater was in use as it quickly depletes the pressure. The rapid heater needs to be used for about 60 seconds. Once I had this knowledge, I tried it again and quickly got the thing going. I wonder where I can get a new pressure guague for my lamp?