A mending day to end my holidays

 

I’m back to work at the hospital on Monday. And after two weeks off, I’m feeling much more relaxed and grateful for the opportunity to be working here. To be honest, by the end of last year, I was feeling more and more tired and like I deserved special treatment because of the work I was doing. Now that I’m better rested I’ve got things back into some perspective: it’s my privilege to be here, to do the work and teaching that I love. It’s great to be called somewhere by God and to be able to put the skills he’s given my to use.

Inevitably there’s a bunch of little jobs around the house that need doing over the holidays. And equally inevitably, I don’t get around to most of them until the holiday is almost over. We’ve got leaking taps, towel rails lying on the bathroom floor, and a non-functional washing machine because of an electrical fault. Those were all relatively easily fixed: even the washing machine, which miraculously decided to start working again of its own accord three months after it last worked, and in spite of all my attempts to open and clean it, reseat electronics and so forth.

But the job that I’ve been thinking about most was the annoying fact that our computer and anything connected to it (iPod, speakers, Kindles etc) gives any barefoot person who touches it a nasty shock. I thought initially it was an electrical fault, but on testing, it seemed to be a problem caused by our voltage regulator, which all electronics here have to be connected to in order to avoid damage. It lacked an earth pin, which meant everything connected to it could not be earthed and any small ground leak from the computer built up on the case. It’s very painful and annoying and potentially quite dangerous for the children.

So here’s the solution I sorted out, running a piece of house wiring cable from the PC case:

across the room to the (filed down) steel cap on an old water pipe in the corner of our room, just opposite the meter box on the external wall:

Now effectively I’ve wired my own earth from the computer (and anything else connected on that side of the voltage regulator) to the house earth. It’s working a treat, which means no more taking my foot off the floor as I connect the camera to post these photos!

In other news, Will starts school on Monday (at age 3 1/2, in French at a local school where Catherine will also be helping with curriculum development for the teachers), and we’ve just got back from 5 days at Kumbya. We spent the first two (wet) days camping, and then moved into a cabin for the last 3 nights. We also had a New Year’s Eve bonfire! Here’s a pic of the kids “playing with fire” at our campsite.

Happy New year and blessings from all of us,

Tim