Our Last House

New house - Garden will appear front left square

Two years ago we sold our house at Alice Springs. It was a lovely, comfortable house with four bedrooms, a spacious multi-purpose room and outdoor area, and a large garden. It needed painting and new carpets and some work done on the garden, but we were fortunate enough to sell it without having to do all that.

The new owners were happy to do the painting and lay carpets and also wanted a swimming pool, so we negotiated a price adjustment and placed our goods in storage while we waited for a new house to be built at Nuriootpa, South Australia.

It suited us well. We planned to do some travel overseas and in Australia while our new abode was being built. Unfortunately, the house we had in mind wasn't going to be completed until late 2018 after an earlier estimate of Christmas 2017. We were disappointed, so we decided to make alternative arrangements.

Now, we have paid a deposit on a newly completed house at Tanunda, South Australia, only six kilometres from Nuriootpa and also close to Angaston. The three towns form the centre of the Barossa Valley which many of you will know is one of Australia's largest wine producing regions.

Our new house is conjointly owned by the Barossa Village, a retirement village organisation that provides three levels of aged care; independent living, home care and residential care.

The house has three bedrooms, two bathrooms (both roomy), a one car garage, and a combined kitchen, lounge dining room. We would have liked a two car garage, but none was available. Such is life.

By Australia Day (26th January 2018) we hope to be settled in but will probably still be unpacking our personal effects as they will be delivered the day before.

We are getting excited as the days pass.

Robin

Visiting Baselworld 2017

With a keen interest in horology, for years I had read numerous articles about the annual Baselworld Watch and Jewellery shows.

As they are held in Basel, Switzerland, I never dreamed that I would get to attend one. However, my lovely wife Christina, while planning our overseas trip, included a visit to Basel as part of a treat for my 70th birthday.

Because accommodation was all booked out at Basel, we stayed in a lovely German village called Bad Krozningen, about 40 km away from Basel and took the train to and from Basel.

One of the two train stations in Basel is only a five minute walk from the site where Baselworld is held. With no idea where Baselworld was located, we hopped off at the station and immediately saw signage directing people to Baselworld. Groups of people were walking in the direction of the signs, so we followed and on arrival it was obvious that this was a bigger event than Ben Hur, the movie.

Thousands of people milled about coming in and out of doorways, sitting sipping coffee or alcohol, plucking away at their smart phones, or chatting to others while they sucked in carcinogens. This was truly a huge event and it was day three. One can only guess what day one would have been like.

We bought our 60 Euros tickets and moved into the main pavillion. From then on, it was like trying to take a drink from a fire hydrant - watches and more watches, all the big name brands and some of the smaller brands. Wall to wall watch bling. Although I can't remember it, Christina said I was like a child in a toy shop. Hard to believe really.

We spent most of the day viewing all the bling and the displays that accompanied them. A couple of displays were minimal with entrances only available to invited guests and people within the watch industry. For example, BLVGARI who had produced one of the thinnest watches ever, had two well dressed doormen who took one look at Christina and I, assumed we were well beneath the station to purchase any of their overpriced stock and told us, in more polite terms, to piss off.

When we got to the CASIO stand, we went to enter a hallway leading into what we thought was a publicly accessible entry only to be told by a young lady that we couldn't enter. A tall German man dressed in a suit stepped in and after a brief discussion about where we were from, invited us in. He was the German manager for CASIO and spent about a half hour showing us the new watches on display. He and I got talking and he realised that I had a good working knowledge of CASIO and its products. At the end, he led us to a bar and offered us complimentary drinks and nibbles which we gratefully accepted as we sat back and felt like VIPs.

CASIO produces a very large range of watches under several brand names, one of which is Edifice. In that range, they have a few models that link to one's smart phone from which they get the correct time in whatever time zone one is in. There's an app that sits on your phone and is used to set a second time zone - World Time. Your local time zone is set automatically provided your smart phone is up to date. You can also set alarms and retain logs from timing events. Quite remarkable.

The Link watches also come with a button that will locate your phone ie, you press the button and it causes your phone to beep. Excellent technology.

Later, at Keil in Germany I took advantage of the tax benefits and bought a CASIO Edifice Link watch which I wore for the rest of our journey, It's solar powered, very tough and looks nice as you can see from the photograph.

By the time we had completed our day at Baselworld 2017, we had seen enough watches to last a life time and discovered a number of brands I had never heard of.

Some of the watches are very highly priced which left me wondering who buys all this stuff? An $8,000 Rolex won't keep time as well as my <$500 Edifice Link watch, doesn't have an alarm capacity and won't automatically change to different time zones.

Robin