Funkydodo!

Hey there one and all…. has it already been 6 months?  Nooooo!

Things have been pretty flat out over here – what with all my cooking classes etc (naturally I’m kidding!)

We recently had a visit from Emily and Adam (my previous flatmate & her boyfriend)  which left me feeling a little homesick, but a few walks on the idyllic beaches over here and I think I’m back into the Mauritian way…

Here are a few photos from their visit…

Ask Adam how his quad bike wounds are coming along   We had an early surprise birthday party for Kent.  How cute are those party hats

We were adopted by some feral kittens when we first moved into our house (along with a long list of Mauritian animal inhabitants)… This is “Tinkerbell” with a rib.  Two of the three kittens cannot be handled but they regularly catch and deliver wee presents (ie: dead shrew’s click here to see what a shrew looks like) at our doorsteps (ahhh bless)

We have are getting a “Saturday night special” puppy at the end of the month to add to the entourage.

Well, Kent is grumbling for his dinner so I had better dash… will try and write something a little more entertaining next time… Hope you’re all well and happy.

Love Nades

XOX

welcome back….

it’s been almost 5 months since the last update. awesome commitment huh.

i blame joomla – it’s crap. which is why you will notice that we now have a shiny new interface (if you actually ever click on this link anymore… and seriously – if you’re still checking this page after 5 months of nothing you have way too much time on your hands).

those of you that have been in for the long haul will notice that it’s not actually a shiny new interface at all – it’s the same tried and true interface that the chicken had for all those years. what was i thinking? what were YOU thinking? why didn’t somebody stop me. DEATH to joomla, long live wordpress!

moving on… a lot has happened in the last 5 months. but i’m not going to tell you any of it. that’s not my job. it’s important to have a separation of duties in any relationship. which is why Nads is in charge of content, and I’m in charge of the ugly mess that the content sits on. I really would love to give you an update – but the clear breach of demarcation lines would mean the unions would get involved, and there’d be a strike, a picket line, and my ironing wouldn’t get done.

some general housekeeping – you’ll notice i moved all the posts (all *3* of them) from the previous joomla mess. comments unfortunately didn’t move, and lets face it – it’s not like any of you posted any kind of shakespearean prose, no intellectual insights, it barely made it through the spam filter. HOWEVER – comments are now new and improved… no longer do you need to wait for me to login and judge your post worthy or not of publishing. it now happens automagically! but what about the spam I hear you cry!?! wordpress has some funky new automagic spam filter…. if it works you’ll never hear about it again. if it doesn’t you’ll have to put up with my whingeing about blog spam for the next 2 years. AND i’ll disable comments too. so shoot a spammer today, preserve your commenting experience.

more housekeeping – there’s also a new and improved photo gallery. i went back to jalbum for awhile, and it’s great, but it’s not server based. which means when you move machines, rebuild machines, whatever – all your configs and stuff are lost. it’s all too hard. sorry Cres (official jalbum salesman), I’m giving gallery another run… and this time it doesn’t seem to suck too much. there’s even a funky java upload applet that lets you auto resize and stuff. you can access the new gallery at http://www.funkydodo.com/gallery . And before you tell me… YES I KNOW it’s empty. blame the content creator!! If you *really* can’t live without some damn photo’s then go to the old gallery at http://www.funkydodo.com/Jalbum . and don’t complain to me that it’s half broken – why do you think it’s the *old* album huh?

and then there’s microsoft live writer – it’s standalone publishing for wordpress… makes posting soooooo simple! and it supports offline composing / batch uploading. AND it supports embedded pics as well! i’m sure the help file has some steak knives hidden in there somewhere as well.

and then there’s the eepc – as part of a recent round of enterprise bargaining I bought Nads an eepc so she can provide content for you shmucks to gobble up for free until i can come up with a way to make you pay for it. eepc’s are cool… i tried to like the default linux install, i really did. it’s been nearly 3 weeks i’ve worked with it. but i just can’t stand it anymore. i’m putting windows on it. be gone, you pot smoking, crack head, open source hippies!

you’ll notice everything in this post is all about simplifying content creation. so there’s no excuses now. if you don’t see at least one post an hour from Nads I encourage you to voice your frustration by clicking on the paypal link on the left.

In true marketing fashion i’m now going to crack a bottle of champagne to celebrate the re-launch of funkydodo.com and standby while the sleek new site has 4million technical issues over the next week which I can of course blame on those IT idiots.

so when you want internet you go to your pc and you fire up IE and stuff happens…. over here you plug in your crappy little usb modem thing and stand on one leg, dance a bit, take your clothes off and stand on the balcony with a coat hanger pointing at the satellite and rejoice at your 2000ms ping times.

when you want cable tv you ring up foxtel and the guy comes out and hooks it up and you watch your 50 or so channels…. over here you ring up and try and describe where your house is because no-one over here uses street numbers – because of course "everyone knows everyone over here". and then if you’re lucky enough for the guy to actually find your house, turn up and do some kinda miracle hookup you then have maybe 6 channels in english (showing constant loops of "the gods must be crazy" and other similar african quality flicks) and the rest in french.

oh i could go on and on…. but my arm’s sore from holding up the coat hanger.

regards from,

the god forsaken speck of sand off africa.

Hey there,

Thanks for all your emails…

Well we have been having a laugh trying to find our way around over here. I attempted to navigated Kent around the top right of the Island yesterday as we were nearly taken out by a bus, found a humongous tortoise in a rock pen on the roadside, found a gorgeous little windsurfing bay and didn’t find the advertised factory outlet stores at all… pretty well sums life up in Mauritius so far J

Kent has a fairly good list of restaurants for us to try over here (surprise surprise) courtesy of the Mauritian Lonely Planet, but my fave so far (as an experience) is “Alchemy” which was closed the first few attempts, but on Friday night, mid deluge, we finally sat down, soaking wet and had a nice cold beer and a green “blue lagoon” (?). No other diners wasn’t a great sign… but I think the climax was when the mouse ran right through the restaurant (chased by the staff “faulty towers” style) and disappeared into the kitchen! I do have to add that our main (really good food) arrived with a disclaimer from the restaurant manager/waiter/barman that “if you don’t like it, you don’t pay” (kind of wish he hadn’t said that – I’m sure they never say that on Gordon Ramsay’s show!) anyway the meal was GREAT & the waiter/barman/manager couldn’t have been more attentive & finished our dining experience with two free shots of “Tsunami” so we all parted friends!

We finally got the keys to the house (and the official tour) today. Its really nice, huge dining/living area, plus another room (avo nana nap room I’m thinking ), large kitchen (kind of a wasted on me) & three bedrooms upstairs. The bonus is the gorgeous rock cottage outside… it has just been renovated into a really cute self-contained unit.

Sorry to ALL those of you who have offered to come and help me interview for the pool boy (you know who you are), but the position was already filled L

Kent’s role seems to come with his own car-wash guy, who cleans the car while Kent is at work. There are also separate cafeterias in Kent’s building, one for the staff ($40/month) and another for the managers. I haven’t seen a “subway” yet.

We decided to be social last night (& confirm your requests re the quality of the Long Island Tea’s) and went to the bar at the hotel. Kent was sure it was “Sega Night” – the national dance (not the PC version) but it turned out to be Karaoke night. You can stop holding your breath… we didn’t do sonny & cher or anything, but there were some pretty impressive singers & given Kent’s disposition today, I think the Long Island Iced Tea’s are pretty good

Well that is about it from us for now…. Hope all is well with you and your families.

Take care and keep in touch

Nades, Kent and the dodo…

so I’m sitting in an internet cafe at the super U waiting for Nadines 4000000000 or so pics to finish uploading – the net speed here is pretty good it’s just a heap of little files that I *should* have tarred up and then extracted once it was up on the dodo…. learnt for next time.

once it’s finished uploading you can access the pics via http://www.funkydodo.com/nadine OR you can just click on the pics button in the toolbar on top of this page. see how easy i make things for you people?

there are pretty good wireless net deals here through emtel but I need my work visa and lease agreement and stuff which I don’t yet have and probably won’t have for a coupla weeks yet…. in the interim i can get a pre-paid wireless net connection but there’s no data usage plans on the prepaid – and it’s charged at about 1AUD per 800k upload…. hence why i’m sitting in this internet cafe uploading pics and not doing it over the wireless.

good news is we now have a working local mobile (after some issues deciphering the french destructions)….. and the great news for Nadine is it works out to only be about 4cents AUD to send international sms (we *think*… yet to figure out the billing).

the number for you guys hitting us international is +2307472338 (i havent confirmed that country code yet so if it doesn’t work don’t shoot me)

the great news for *you* (and Nadine) is emtel let you send sms direct to emtel phones for FREE! just email 7472338@emtelworld.net This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

go nuts with it – Nadine loves the spam

joomla is starting to give me the shiats…. you’ll notice below it’s now defaulted to splitting posts across 2 columns despite me telling it not to do this – and i can’t remember now how i configured it in the first place. once we get net sorted i’ll prolly move back to wordpress which has some equally annoying traits.

after stuffing around with gallery, zenphoto and some other all singing all dancing web gallery stuff i’ve finally given up and gone back to jalbum. Carazy’s constant pimping of it after all these years made me think it must still be ok and it sure is simple to use. Supports offline batching as well (which is proving very useful right now…. although after 40 minutes of uploading and STILL going i’m really regretting not tarring first…. *sigh*). at least internet cafe time here is only about 5AUD per hour.

Nadine’s at home in bed at the moment feeling a bit seedy – it could have been the fish last night (doubtful)… it could be the local water (doubtful)…. or it could be the pina colada’s by the pool after dinner last nite.

anyway – my upload is finally finishing…. until next time – au revoir and may your fromages never be glassy.

Bonjour one and all,

We have arrived!

Sad leaving everyone, especially at the airport on the way out. Special thanks to everyone for the awesome farewells (and gifts) all over NZ and Australia…

Well we were happily upgraded to first class on the flight from Perth to Mauritius (go us!) certainly a step up from the usual “crèche” class that I’m used to travelling on (missed the friendly VB/PB crew though!)

We are currently staying at a hotel in Port Louis, great views from our room! We wandered around the city shopping area on our first day (so far the credit card remains unscathed, but only just….) lots of label stuff such as Dolce & Gabana, Prada etc…

I have already succumbed to the delicious pastries here (wasn’t much of a fight I must admit)… best “pain au chocolat” ever! We are still discovering the many culinary wonders that Mauritius has to offer…. A quick trip through the city fruit markets yesterday was an eye opener… the presentation of food is amazing, so many colours and beautiful displays. Kent discovered last night that “burger”, “medium-rare” means uncooked mince (hmmmm probably didn’t need a phrase book for that one)

I appeared to have my very own policeman following me through the local markets yesterday. Perhaps he had mistaken me for somebody famous?

Today we are hoping to track down our car so that “Grayson tours” can begin. Will let you know how that pans out…

Au revoir

Nades (& Kent)