Well there is an angel looking down on my parents house. My mum and dad drove up to Cardwell from Townsville on Monday morning to find the house with only minor damage but very messy and wet. The downstairs area was mostly storm damaged with the tilter doors having been completely blown off and alot of sand and mud was washed underneath but the ute and the downstairs furniture was undamaged, amazing. The table downstairs which even has a glass top on it was pushed sideways but was not broken at all and the ute's windows are all still in one piece. The backyard was another story, the garden and all the trees were a wreck, the backyard shed was completely flattened and the rear awning of the patio upstairs was blown off. While they were attempting clean up the Army arrived and cleaned up the backyard for them, cut away all of the fallen trees and branches and took the demolished shed away. They helped my folks so much, we are very grateful to the Army for all of their help. My mum told me that they were going through the entire town house by house repairing what they can and clearing away as much as they could. The upstairs section of the house had minor water damage from a broken window and the Whirly Bird on the roof was blown off leaving a pretty big hole which the SES covered with a tarp for them to prevent any further damage if it happened to rain again.
All in all mum and dad have came out of this extraordinary cyclone remarkably well, I am so relieved, as are they. My mum was thinking the worst, she was thinking that they may have to just shut the doors (if there were any) and walk away and attempt to start over somewhere else at the ripe old age of 62. Not an easy thing to contemplate. But thankfully that wont be necessary, as soon as the water is running and the power is back on they will return home permanently and clean up the mud and sand and resume life as best as they can.
The town of Cardwell did not fare so well unfortunately. Majority of the town is in ruins, so I am not even sure how it will recover from this or how long it will take. My parents have friends and colleagues who have literally lost everything, their homes and belongings flattened or blown away. It must be devastating to return to such carnage.
I can relax a bit now knowing that they will be OK and I wont have to plan a hasty trip back to Australia to help relocate them. My mother in law is here visiting and we have been for a bit of shopping, visited some markets and she has had some real good play time with the children, which is the most important part of her visit as the kids have missed their family so much these past 6 months.
We had dramas yesterday also, our new driver who has been giving us some grief these past 2 weeks told me that he was taking 2 days off, just like that. I asked Marcus to go out and talk to him about it before he left for the night and the driver wouldn't even look at him, he just rode away on his motorbike. We called our Thai friend and he made a call to the driver to ask him in Thai what the problem was and he told him that he felt "uncomfortable working for us" as Marcus made a comment about his driving when he ran a RED light and that he needed 2 days off. We couldn't believe it. This guy has been working for us for 2 weeks and in that time he has ran the car battery flat twice, was late to take Judd to school nearly everyday, ran our petrol bill up, broke down because he broke the key less remote and the car immobilised the engine and he didn't call us he just took it upon himself to pull the dash apart to try and fix the so called problem when all he had to do was press a small button and it would have started the car. Then he failed to show up to work last Thursday and I believe he was hung over from the Chinese New Year celebrations and finally the drama we had last night with him running off. So we decided to sack him. But he wont answer his mobile so we don't even know if he plans to show up for work or if he has quit. I am hoping he has quit so we don't have to be the "bad" guys.
These problems seem to be never ending. I am sure some people back home would say " Oh poor baby her driver isn't working out" but what they don't realise is that this driver is our equivalent of a second car. Every time he doesn't show for work I have to pile the kids in and drive the 80min round trip to take Marcus to work so I can then have the car to take Judd to school and run my errands. Having a driver sounds fancy but its not. Having to rely on that person to show up everyday and to drive your loved ones safely around a foreign country is alot to get used to especially when we have come from a 2 car family and having the freedom for each of us to go about our business without burdening the other. Also I am a control freak and I prefer to be the one behind the wheel, I know how to drive and I believe I drive well and very safely and if something was to happen and I wasn't in a position to prevent it I don't think that would sit well with me, especially if someone got hurt.
However the other reason Marcus wants us to use a driver is to prevent us being railroaded by the Thai police if one of us happened to get into an accident with a car or a motorbike. The westerner always pays no matter who was at fault and the rules here are that if you are in an accident, no matter how big or small with a motorbike the driver of the car is ALWAYS at fault. Even if the driver of the motorbike is drunk and rams his bike into your parked car, you will be at fault and YOU will pay. So to have a Thai driver is a good precaution against losing alot of money. Friends of ours were is a small accident with a Thai person on a motorbike who hit them and our friends had to pay over 40 000 baht compensation to the motorcyclist. Weird huh, but that is how it works over here.
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