Thursday 15th August 2013

This morning we started off with an inter station and Kingston video conference which was kinder awkward as we had no agenda notes but it lasted about one and a half hours any way. The new 2014 Davis and Casey recruits where sitting in also. After smoko I worked from my room clearing all emails and almost forgot to do ARPANSA, so I shot down there and completed that a bit late.

After lunch John put on some field training on glacier traversing for all those that would like to abseil down a crevasse and who would like to visit the Russian aircraft that crashed in 1960. There were only four of us and then only three after Peter L got a bit stressed out and decided just to look at the photos. The amount of gear you have to carry is crazy as you have to be able to be prepared for any situation such as sudden blizzard or for one of your mates that you are roped up to falls into a crevasse. If that happens you have to anchor him, and then rig up a pulley system to pull him back up. It's all very technical and lots of fancy not tying but that's just the way it is and what you have to be proficient in if you want to visit these dangerous but spectacular places.

Late in the afternoon I went down to the shack with the intent to work on my dead amplifier and repair the damaged band change switch which went up in flames about six weeks ago. It's going to be a very difficult job as I have to pull the whole amplifier apart just to get to it. I was hoping just to buy a new one but after a call to the manufacture he said he could not supply one, so now I have no choice in the matter. It took me several hours to strip it down and to remove all the salvageable bits and I found some perspex rod that I cut to size and prepared for the replacement part. It's going to be one of those jobs that you can't replace as is because of the way it has been assembled, so I will have to drill some holes out and modify the band switch which I hate doing, but it's the only way.

Tonight's foreign movie was a Swedish drama called Ondskan (Evil) (2003).

Plot summary:

Erik is expelled from school for fighting. He ends up at a private boarding school where the senior students control the young ones. Erik finds a friend in Pierre, his roommate. The story revolves around Erik who just wishes to be left alone and graduate. He doesn't listen to what the seniors have to say and they don't like it.

It's a classic example of bullying and bastardisation that I'm sure we all have experienced at some time in life. It was one of those movies that got your blood boiling and touched every emotion in your body. I thoroughly recommend it. Don't be put off by those SBS movies with sub titles as most of those European movies rely on human emotions rather than guns, car chases and special effects and it's nice to walk away from a movie that has touched your core. After the movie we watched two sessions of "Trailer Park Boys", a new series we have started to watch and it's so funny. It's a Canadian comedy about life in a Trailer Park.