The 26th of January is a public holiday in Australia to celebrate the Nation. Unlikely Americans who have a thirst for the selection of their national day, those I’ve met in Australia just take it as a day off to have a party or break.

Sione Halasika, our youngest son, fourth in the tree, had his birthday on the 25th, just shy of the national holiday. But as we wanted to have some close friends over, we had the national holiday as an excuse to share his birthday with family and friends.

Of course, since we were a bit mamio in getting things planned we didn’t get to invite people until the week before hand. Some made it, others didn’t.

‘Ofa made some wonderful dishes, which I complemented with seriously paku BBQ (pa pa kiu.) Obviously the English phase/word BBQ derives from the Tongan papaku meaning seriously burnt from existence.

‘Ofa put her hands up and made some Lu Kapapulu, Sea-food salad, potatoe salad, while I managed to add on burnt lamb chops, and burnt beef sausages, burnt winglets, burnt drumsticks topped with burnt chicken kebabs. The onions were good though, but unfortunately we forgot it and didn’t put it out on the table.

Grandpa Sisi prayed for the young man’s well being while we gathered with family and friends to wish the old fella a happy birthday and best wishes for his life.

From your mum, dad, siblings, family and friends,

Happy Birthday Sione Halasika.

Summary:

If you believe all the hype that spins around about network/internet security, especially coming out of politicians kept in office through exposing their “hands on technology” or espoused by news/forums that get their money by the ‘eye balls count’ then I have some beach front property in Tofoa to sell you.

If you believe, then you need a course in Media Studies 101, how to sell junk while making people believe you’ve served them well.

More Details:

There’s a little storm in a teacup brewing around the blogosphere, news outlets pushing for IE to be replaced because it’s been used (and identified) by Google as a vector for stealing intellectual property from corporates such as themselves.

Apart from the obvious self-serving nature of the “information release.”

Two immediate questions come to mind.

Are Google desktops running Windows 98 or Windows 2000 ? It’s pretty hard to ignore (not get updated) IE7 on Windows XP, and if you’re workstation is kept up to date, then it’s most likely got IE8.

The attack targeted IE6 and Adobe Acrobat(?) so how are these vanguards of technology to be trusted if they’re critical infrastructures are run on 10 year-old software.

I can’t really see how IE6 could be used against Google unless they really hate their own browser (what’s it’s name?) that they would have IE6 still running on their corporate network equipment.

Or, maybe Google have all their accounting systems running on Windows NT or Windows 2000 servers, and no-one secured them properly (why is the administrator on that box doing e-mail and browsing the internet on the server?)

Don’t trust Windows for what you show the world, but run all your internal critical stuff on it?

Google used to be the see no evil, do no evil, company, but they sure like to play tight with announcements and the repercussions of those statements.

If you want to educate yourself instead of trash talking, I suggest the following reads:

Google, China, Chicken Little and Cyber Armageddon. at TrendMicro by Rik Ferguson

China vs. Google (et al) via MSIE... – Stop the Bus at Preach Security by Rafal Los

Interesting dilemma on the train this morning, and it didn’t have anything to do with the route being changed from the timetable route, nor that it had fewer carriages than what is the schedule.

No the dilemma has nothing to do with State Rail still fiddling with their broken timetable 4 months after introducing it and spending more of our money on their celebration parties.

On the ride this morning we enjoyed another passenger who was walking up and down the carriages begging for some of our ‘spare change.’ with the Guard station cutting the carriages into two disconnected cars, that’s 2 carriages he wandered up and down.

In the hustle and bustle of our lives, what do we have to offer those less fortunate. In what manner can we meaningfully contribute? Would giving cash hand outs contribute, or is it more practical to do something else.

The old guy seems lucid enough and isn’t seeking anything but money (and he knows his time on the train is limited until a guard finds out he’s riding free.) He’s bundled warm enough for the weather, for now during the day, but he’s got to have a base somewhere or he’s freezing at night. (Freezing to death at night seems more likely?)

Is our personal standards for ‘contribution’ too rigid a system, or do we just not have the flexibility to consider each applicant as they come?

Which homeless centre cares for this man? Which Church or private organisation disassociated from me helps this man? What will he have to eat this morning, day. Will he eat at all?

While we listen and focus on the human tragedy that is Haiti, what would you do on an encounter like this much closer to home?

Kuo kamata maheni mai ange ‘a e fefine ko Sesilia, ka e pehee ‘a Sione Halasika mo e kau me’a ni, pea kalasi kehe atu pe foki ee funny ia ‘a e ongo ua ni.

Faingofua ange pe foki ‘a e ongo ua lalahi iaa, kuo nau ‘osi maheni pea na pa ngofua pe foki ko e fekauatu p eke ‘uma mo fe’iloaki kuo na laine mei ke fai ‘a e ‘uma, fe’iloaki ‘o vave ange aipe ‘a e to e maheni mo e ngaahi fofonga ne ‘osi kamata ke ngaloo.

Lava aipe ‘a e kaukau tahi ia ‘ane afi mo e hake mai pe kuo ‘osi kamata ke tete ee loungutu he mokosia ka e ‘ikai ke fie mokosiaa.

Ko e ‘aho ni, fai ‘enau va’inga soccer pe ‘i tu’a pea faka’osi ‘aki pe ‘enau kaka holo he ‘ulu’i ‘akau he tomui ‘o Misi.

Ko ho’o siana ‘eni kuo kamata ‘ene tesi ‘a engaahi sitepu heni,

Ka ke fakatokanga’i atu, ‘aonga ange pe ke tukunoa’i ‘a e ngaahi sitepu ia heni ‘oku ‘ange ‘ange ‘ene fefeka ange ka fai ha fall.

Lava ‘a e katoanga fakamanatu ‘aho ee kui ‘a ‘ofa, ka e toki to’o hake ‘e Sesilia ia mo Selemana (ta’ahine ‘a Kafo’atu) ‘a e veve teunga tau’olunga ‘a e tamaiki lalahi ‘o fai ‘ena show makehe ia ‘anaua he ‘aho hoko.

Ko e malie atu ‘ena ki’i to’onga pea mio ange ‘a Sesilia ia he kuo ‘osi sio foki ia ‘ia ‘amelia he me’a ko e mio.

‘Ofa atu

Ko e Sapate foki ko e ‘aho kai ‘umuu ia homau fonua ni.

Ka e faka’ofa atu pe Sisitoutai, kuo ma to e hu maua ki peito ke ngaahi ha’ane sandwich. ‘Oku holo ‘aupito ‘a e kai ‘a e siana he ‘oku fu’u vahavaha ‘a e ma’u ‘a e me’a ‘oku loto lelei ki ai.

Mahalo ‘e ki’i taloa ha toe ha’u ‘a Sisitoutai ki Tonga ni ka e ‘oua kuo ki’i hiki ‘ene kai ‘o toe tali ha me’a kehe mei he ma mo e cereal.

‘Ofa’s populating her Bebo page, but for those not on Bebo, the clan bake photos are up online courtesy of Microsoft Live.

From: SIONE LAMIPETI TUIHALANGINGIE [mailto:panatonga@hotmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, December 26, 2009 2:58 PM
To: samt@nomoa.com
Subject: Mr Curtis Tuihalangingie First Tongan to attend Beijing University interview with Global time

. Below is the link to the article: http://www.globaltimes.cn/www/english/metro-beijing/people/profile/2009-12/490777.html and you're even on the main online Metro page too: http://www.globaltimes.cn/www/english/metro-beijing/index.html

Curtis Leonard Tu'ihalangingie wearing the Tongan ta'ovala. Photo: courtesy of Tu'ihalangingie

It's not often that The Kingdom of Tonga has been honored in a ceremony at Peking University. Most of the student body might not even know where this island nation is located, not to mention what a Tongan looks like.

 

Good luck with the effort CLT and best wishes this Christmas and the following new year.

 

Sam T

From: Jione Havea [mailto:jioneh@nsw.uca.org.au]
Sent: Friday, December 18, 2009 2:25 PM
To: Talanoa Oceania
Subject: PI event in Syd

Talanoa friends, please note this coming event, on behalf of Katerina

Just wanted to alert you to Lemi Ponifasio and the Mau Dance Company's "Pacific Thought Symposium" as part of the Sydney Festival, Jan 10. The theme is "Bringing Forth the Ancestors."
It will be at the Seymour Center 3-6pm at Uni Sydney and performances of Tempest at 1pm and 8pm. The production includes I-Kiribati male dancers.
More info at: http://www.sydneyfestival.org.au/2010/Free/The-Scope-5th-Pacific-Thought-Symposium/

From: Talanoa Oceania [mailto:talanoaoceania@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, December 05, 2009 10:40 AM
To: Tasilisili
Cc: jione havea
Subject: FW: An Old Monkey Story With A New Ending

Hange eni ha talanoa mei Initia!

A hat-seller who was passing by a forest decided to take a nap under one of the trees, so he left his whole basket of hats by the side. A few hours later, he woke up and realized that all his hats were gone.. He looked up and to his  surprise, the tree was full of monkeys and they had taken all his hats.

The hat seller sits down and thinks of how he can get the hats down. While thinking he started to scratch his head. The next moment, the monkeys were doing the same.

Next, he took down his own hat, the monkeys did exactly the same. An idea came to his mind.

He took his hat and threw it on the floor and the monkeys did that too. So he finally managed to get all his hats back.

Fifty years later, his grandson, also became a hat-seller
and had heard this monkey story from his grandfather.

One day, just like his grandfather, he passed by the same forest. It was very hot, and he took a nap under the same tree and left the hats on the floor.

He woke up and realized that all his hats were taken by the monkeys on the tree. He remembered his grandfather’s words, started scratching his head and the monkeys followed. He took down his hat and fanned himself and again the monkeys followed.

Now, very convinced of his grandfather's idea, he threw his hat on the floor but to his surprise, the monkeys still held on to all the hats..

Then one monkey climbed down the tree,

An interesting announcement in Tonga letting organisations register themselves online. Great new service feature although of what little I know of the business’ in Tonga the number of organisations who are capable of taking advantage of this new service has to be significantly and there are a number of alternative IT services that could have been instigated (at a lower cost) with higher value for both the Government and Private Sector.

Tonga’s Electronic Company Registry, 1st in the Pacific Goes Live Today

Tuesday, 01 December 2009 14:36 administrator GOVERNMENT - Ministries & Departments

1 December 2009

Today, the Ministry for Labour, Commerce & Industries announced …the launching of the new electronic company registry. The Registry, the first of its kind for a sovereign nation in the Pacific, simplifies business registration procedures and reduces the time it takes to start a business.

…

"The system makes it easier for business to register and, once they do, will house their records securely and safely online," …

Tonga is the first nation in the Pacific to have such an electronic registry, and this system is based on the same software used in the New Zealand Companies Office. Firms bringing in their registration documents will have the paperwork entered into the electronic system by Ministry staff …

To ensure all records are transferred online, the Tongan government requires all companies to re-register within six months. …

ENDS

Issued by the: Ministry of Labour, Commerce and Industries, Nuku'alofa.

Just to be pedantic.

IFC, financed by the World Bank and New Zealand, modifies software the New Zealand Government has already paid for. Implements this in Tonga as part of New Zealand’s and WB general Pacific Aid program. I hope this was a ‘grant.’

It’s good to see they’ve gone for implementing something that already ‘works’ and hopefully there were enough skills on both sides (from their side and our side, [however that’s defined]) to make sure the idiosyncrasies of the local populace are adapted into the ‘system.’ (And I don’t mean liliu faka-tonga ee ngaahi fo’i lea fakapapalangii.)

Security ? Did anyone mention Security ?

It seems the above package is such a great deal, they the Government of Tonga has to relinquish all control of the system and let it be operated in “New Zealand.” The press releases aren’t too clear on the details, but for some absurd reason recent hacks on Australian Government websites do not preclude me from thinking that just because the stupid thing is in New Zealand isn’t going to make it any more secure than the Tongans in New Zealand?

Did we not just get a security alert this month regarding Man in the Middle Hijack’s of HTTPS (SSL) connections ? Warnings only came out last month (November) has the ‘system’ been updated and tested.

OpenSSL TLS Session Renegotiation Plaintext Injection Vulnerability

A vulnerability has been reported in OpenSSL, which can be exploited by malicious people to manipulate certain data.

The vulnerability is caused due to an error in the TLS protocol while handling session re-negotiations. This can be exploited to insert arbitrary plaintext before data sent by a legitimate client in an existing TLS session via Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attacks.

Successful exploitation may allow e.g. sending an arbitrary HTTP request under an authenticated context if certificate-based authentication is used by the server.

English Translation: Secured web access is a fat dream until this is fixed.

When the next big vulnerability occurs, is there a reputable process for reviewing the risks and implementing a change process, or do we just cross our fingers and hope the whackers go somewhere else?

It would be sad to hear that Tonga also becomes the 1st country in the Pacific with it’s electronic Company Registry republished out of Russia.

Not that we’re too used with Government sharing information about the risks they' are taking with our private data, but this project is rather extensive in the private information they store and make available on the Internet. It may have been a good time to be ahead of the game in having some processes and audit systems in place ?

Australia and New Zealand have their ISO standard 27001:2006 that provides a framework to maximise security of the service and your private data. Do Tonga corporations deserve the same level of protection, or is it OK to let it slide in the Pacific?

Don’t worry, they won’t notice.

Very near and recent security breaches include:

Hacked: Ministry of Information, Tonga (Today Dec 1st) – Joomla website (nice and beautiful Web Content Management System, but seems to be high on the list of hackable systems with plenty of security alerts every week.)

Joomla seems to be the flavour of the month with the Government of Tonga at the moment (“it’s easy”) so hopefully the crude, rude statement above doesn’t start showing up on the rest of the unpatched systems for Tonga.

And don’t even go to one of those links to the site, just don’t do it until the site is fixed.

Hacked: Australian Prime Minister’s Website (September, 2009)

The prime minister's website has been hacked into in protest over proposed reforms of internet censorship.

The website, www.pm.gov.au, was brought down at about 7.20pm (AEST) on Wednesday night along with that of the Australian Communications and Media Authority, but both were back online about an hour later.

Hacked: JB Hifi (Today Dec 1st, 2009)

JB Hi-Fi's websites in Australia and New Zealand were redirecting customers to malicious web pages over the weekend in a cyber attack in the lead-up to Christmas.

The exact details of the attack are not yet clear as the retailer has refused to comment but users first started reporting problems on Friday night.

Visitors to jbhifi.com.au reported being automatically redirected to Chinese websites carrying malware. Similar issues affected JB Hi-Fi's New Zealand website, which is hosted on the same server.

Those with anti-virus software and fully patched internet browsers would have been alerted to the security issue upon visiting the page but people without up-to-date protection could be infected without even knowing.

Liability, Culpability

And what happens when after repeated concerns from company clients, data loss continues to leak and damage occurs to the a company through this data loss?

News this week points at Restaurants in the USA suing the vendor of a credit payment point of sale device that allowed identities of clients to be stolen costing these restaurants millions in penalties, operational reviews,

Threat Level Privacy, Crime and Security Online

Restaurants Sue Vendor for Unsecured Card Processor

Seven restaurants have sued the maker of a bank card-processing system for failing to secure the product from a Romanian hacker who breached their systems.

The restaurants, located in Louisiana and Mississippi, have filed a class-action suit against Georgia-based Radiant Systems for producing a point-of-sale (POS) system that they say was not compliant with payment card industry security standards and resulted in an undetermined number of customers having their debit and credit card numbers stolen.

Oh boy, is Sydney going through a heat wave or what.

Today it’s raining which hopefully means a little reprieve from the heart. Fortunately in this 21st century many can ignore the heat, because we’re contributing to it with all the electricity being burned to keep us cool in our offices.

But, let’s blame the Indians without air-conditioning for causing global warming!!!

Definitely the type of weather that can be fatal for the elderly, not well, without air-conditioning.

Sydney heat is very different than Tonga heat. The heat in Tonga is consistently higher than Sydney, but it is also mixed with a high humidity. In Sydney the heat waves are very dry, suffocating.

The old back-up solution for dry weather is the trusty wet blanket hanging in the wind. Speaking with my Burmese village friend. The practise in his village was to hang up wet blankets to help put back moisture into the air.

We had an old fan, back in the day, that looked like an air-conditioning window unit, except all it was was a boxed fan with a large tray of water underneath.

Hope all is well with you and yours.

Happy Birthday Auntie Lita.

 

This is a real story, children are warned not to try this at home.

Fai atu ee finemotu’a Tonga ‘i Perth mo ‘ene fanauu ke fai ‘enau talatala, he ko e to’u momoko foki ‘eni pea too ee ngaahi mahaki kehekehe he fonuaa, kau mai ai mo e swine flu …

Fai atu ‘a e sivi ‘a e toketaa, hange hange ki he toketaa ‘oku ‘iai e ki’i angakehe ‘o e kau me’a ni. Faka’eke’eke atu ‘e he toketa ki he fa’e ni ‘o ma’u ai ‘a e tali ni:

Ko e uike ‘eni ‘e ua fai ‘emau faka’ehi’ehi mo e tuku atu ee ‘u me’a kehekehe hange ko e kaukauu mo e ‘u me’a tene pusiaki’i mai ‘aki ‘a e pukee.

‘Ai ‘a e mei to fohake ‘a e toketa, mo ne pehe ange ki he fa’e ni.

“Oi, ‘oi, ‘oi, …, mou ‘alu, ‘alu, … leva ‘o fai ha vakai ki he water. Taa ko e fiu kita he tatala hake ‘a e mahakii ko hono kapau he ‘uli …

P-leeease, …

Te’eki ke tau ma’u ‘a e toenga ‘o e ‘a’ahi, he mahalo ‘oku to e ha toe uike ‘e ua ka e toki a’u ‘a angakehe mo ‘ene fanau ki he’ene polokalama sio water. Ko e ta’emahino foki ia ‘a e faka’osi folau mai mei motu ‘o lii taulanga ‘i Petia … Fetaulaki ‘a e … mei mei kalasi tatau ‘eni mo e hifo mai ‘a e kau ‘Eua ‘i Ma’ufanga?

Mate’i mai ange ‘a e hingoa ee finemotu’a ni ?

Rolled out my first load-balanced service today and OpenBSD just makes the whole thing so much simpler. I wanted to spread the load of sending/receiving email between to Mail Servers (MX) primarily so if either machine fails, the service is not disrupted and I have time to ‘fix’ replace the broken machine.

Requirement

Due to compliance requirements to ‘eliminate’ Single Points of Failure I’m required to put up warm backups or services for most of our company servers.

Having a ‘warm’ backup server (that sits around powered on, doing nothing but waiting to be pushed into production) is such a waste of resources, so we wanted to put anything that’s a backup into ‘live’ systems.

There are many advantages to having a live failover instead of a warm backup, and suffice it to say OpenBSD gives us different ‘simple’ to configure options. Two solutions released ‘out-of-the-box’ with the base OS are:

• carp, and
• relayd

CARP

We use CARP on our firewalls, which essentially means that you have two machines set up to handle the work of a single machine. In a firewall situation, CARP provides instant failover from one host to the other in the event one of the machines fail.

For example, machine 1 as MASTER handles all traffic but also pushes needed information to machine 2 so that if machine 1 blows up, the backup machine #2 can take over the work without any users noticing the change.

CARP allows multiple servers to share the same ‘face’/IP so external hosts see only one machine although 2 or more machines may be behind the CARP configuration.

Major/Minor requirement: All hosts support CARP.

RELAYD

relayd takes advantage of OpenBSD’s firewall facilities so the firewall can act as a gateway between the ‘world’ and your disparate servers.

For example: use relayd infront of 10 web servers, so users always see the same IP.

Nice things about relayd.

1. Target Servers do not have to be OpenBSD boxes, and don’t even have to be running exactly the same thing.
   1. One of our future goals is to provide seamless load balancing for a few Windows Hosted servers.
2. Low overhead
3. Relayd monitors the target servers to make sure they are up before forwarding connections to them.
4. Relayd configuration rules are nice and simple, with simple default examples.

Read It, Learn It, Live It, Love It.

Sisitoutai got vaporized twice yesterday. We’d gone for a visit to Mohetau and Lepa, and our poor farm boy went crazy when he was finally let out onto the backyard trampoline. Just stayed out there the rest of the visit.

Unfortunately, it had been raining, so the ‘skirting?’ or guards on the trampoline was still hoarding puddles of water and his feet and pants were soaked by the time to go home. Being the little man who spent hospital time as a baby, he didn’t come out of the incident without coughing badly.

So, yesterday (Sunday) Sisitoutai did his ‘no Church’ thing again and ‘Ofa put him in the ‘vaporize’ treatment program. While under the blanket Sisitoutai eventually remarked to his mother.

“Mum, this is boring’

/nuff said but the kid’s breathing has been much better since.

Vaporizing Sione Halasika

There’s apparently a different explanation when nurses, or mum’s, use the term vaporizing.

‘Ofa said yesterday that she keeps forgetting to vaporize Sione Halasika, and I was a little concerned and asked her why she wanted to vaporize Sione Halasika (as in the SciFi et. al. term for terminating, removing all existence, taking all the vapors out of a person leaving only the dust from which we were formed.)

So, apparently vaporizing is some term the ‘medical’ field uses for wafting vapors through someone’s nasal system? Otherwise known as:

• getting a bowl of steaming water with a drop of some ointment (like Vicks)
• getting under blanket
• letting that vaporized ointment up through the nasal system.

Seems to be some old school medication system that still works in today’s Instant Noodle medicine world.

Wii Wii – we need a better name

The kids are on their two week vacation, so there’s four mouths in the house 24/7 for the next two weeks. The weather is quite unhelpful being windy, cold, and on the touch side of drizzling wet.

We can’t get the kids out, they’re locked in all day for two weeks, what’s to keep a mother sane (or dad for the 2 days he’s at home?) Get the Wii.

We went ahead and got the Nintendo Wii as something to help keep the kids sane and active while in doors for the next two weeks.

After a days trial and tribulation, Ma’ata Ngalo’afe asks a poignant question.

Dad, W-I-I, wii. Why is it called the wii, when we go to the toilet it’s called wii wii and the games called the wii. That’s not a good name, we have to think of another name.

so, there you go. After getting exhausted with boxing, bowling, tennis, and kart racing. Today we’ll think of a ‘better’ name for the Wii.

Since getting back to work and Sione Halasika’s arrival, the daily morning routine has mostly revolved around being woken up by Sione Halasika’s feeding schedule. He either woke us up when time to get ready, or his feed finished around the said time and ‘Ofa would wake me up.

He’s a huge boy now, and older, and his eating habits have changed so he hasn’t been waking up early mornings as regular clock work, in which case the backup system was one of the elder kids waking up to go to the toilets and then wandering in to the room to wake us up so we can be all happily awake together.

I guess Sione Halasika got tired of waiting because at 7:00 am this morning no-one was up so he did a bit of a scream to tell us all he was late for his breakfast.

Always good to have alternate timing systems when critical matters are at issue.

If you’ve had kids, you know that life is just full of outright ‘randomness.’ This morning was another one of these ‘random’ moments with children which just reminds all parents of the Boy Scout motto “Be Prepared” or the other motto, “be afraid, be very afraid.”

We put the kids to bed by 8:00 each evening and are generally struggling to get them up in the morning to get ready for school.

This Schoolday morning, Sisitoutai comes into our bedroom at around 5:45am, which is a horrid time to be getting everyone up, and boy can Sisitoutai yack yack yack. (I wonder who he takes after?)

We feverishly try to quiet him and put him back to bed before the household is all awake. By 6:00 am everyone’s awake, yarrnnnn, by 6:30 we’re all dressed with no where to go.

Too early for breakfast, and too late to let them get too involved with other things or they wont eat their breakfast. So, mum and dad who are not fully awake yet, are now up entertaining the children while setting their breakfast out.

Of course, as is the nature of children, just being up and ready bright and early doesn’t mean you actually get out the door any earlier than normal. Somewhere between the screaming and tattle-tales as they snatch toys, books, etc, away from each other, we finally get breakfast started and not finished.

Ma’ata Ngalo’afe’s being a little weird, she has a long list of food that she wants for breakfast and lunch and dinner. She of course, mainly doesn’t finish her food.

She’s growing up very quickly and loves both the academic, social, physical challenges at school. She does well at all, but really pushes the social envelope. With the recent Michael Jackson phenomena she’s been raving on about this and that Michael Jackson, and I didn’t even know she had listened to any of his music?

Is this a girl thang?

Sisitoutai is, of course, consistent with finishing his breakfast (the morning breakfast, lunch breakfast, and dinner breakfast) whilst the girls have some sort of requirement to leave 1/5th of the food behind (so if they want to eat more, they ask for more food instead of finishing what they are given.)

He’s doing well at school, recently getting his “Silver Badge” a merit award milestone for having received 20 merit awards. Ma’ata Ngalo’afe is ultra competitive and upset that she hasn’t received her’s yet.

Soana Sesilia’s off to school this morning (she’s doing 3 days of school a week) and mum’s going to let her stay longer today. She’s usually picked up at around 2:00pm but today’s the experimental 3:30pm pick-up. Sesilia loves going to school and prays for her school teacher most evenings, while we pray for her increased ‘patience.’

Sione Halasika got up earlier and mum gave him his breakfast so he nodded off again. Cried out in anger from all the noise, and after we quieted down he went back to sleep. The boy loves his sleep, but when he’s awake he wants his attention, all of everyone’s attention.

OK, been a commuter for about a year now so have some unhelpful observations along with the rest of the poor suckers doing public transport in sydney.

a. Getting to town on the trains is a hell lot easier than by buses.

Everyday I walk pass queues of people waiting to get on buses, and hear horror stories of delays (or packed services) where you can be late up to an hour?

b. In the summer, catch old trains are bearable, in the Winter, new trains are unbearable.

mentioned elsewhere in the diatribes, it can get cold/hot when your squeezed in with a bunch of people from between 30 minutes to an hour.

During summer, the old(er) trains with nicely sealed windows can be unbearable, or just a great place for catch sweat gland fever. They’ve all these modern security measures like locked doors, controlled ventilation (not) that just makes that trip just more wonderful.

During winter, avoid the new trains like the plague (‘cause you just might get sick/colds from riding them.) Those metal traps are just freezing in winter. They’re also freezing in summer, but you can thawe out when you get to your destination.

c. If Public Transport should be required for Politicians in charge of the failing systems, they should be required transport for Marketing and Engineers of mobile devices.

There’s nothing like gawking at all the latest tech being used on the trains as everyone pulls something out to while away the aduous trips.

iPhones are popular, but they aren’t as useful as other mobile devices when it comes to gaming, messaging, media players et. al.

Seriously, if you hawk the things, ride the public transports and see how they’re actually used in real life. make a difference to these people’s hour long commute and you’ve won yourself loyalty and more dollars.

d. On Timetables.

Train timetables are pretty good, or more than good enough so far for my needs. There’s still a lot of noise from people complaining about it all the time though.

Unfortunately the online timetable service is a static system (lower cost resources to maintain it wins, i guess.) It would be nice to just punch in your from/to locations and get the days schedule. As it is, you have to wade through all the details/noise from all the stations on a route to get at what you want.