Saturday, October 25, 2008

Journey to the Centre of the Earth

Sunday 5th October 2008
Carolyn is ill, she is feeling a tad under the weather and is not a happy bunny, what’s more it looks like it is the same thing that has been knocking most of the town for six over the last couple of weeks.
We went to the market this morning, before going for a coffee while the kids played over the park. The kids love the new equipment that they have put in, they don’t seem to play on anything else now.
Early afternoon we went to the cinema to see Journey to the Centre of the Earth, the new one with Brendan Fraser in it, Carolyn and the kids thought it was quite good, but Ian can remember the original and thinks there was a lot more detail and edge of the seat material in the first one. It was entertaining, but we won’t be rushing out to buy it when it comes out on DVD.
After the cinema we went to Bunnings and bought some tomato and strawberry plants for the garden, we have plenty of room in the full sun to plant things at the moment and the Café uses vast amounts of tomatoes so it made sense to plant them.
We then went to the Café with the intention of cleaning and lubricating all the new equipment before we start using it, you would not believe how much lube you can get through cleaning this stuff. Soft Serve Ice Cream machines and Slush Machines need to be stripped down, cleaned and lubricated on a regular basis to avoid poisoning people apparently.
The lubricant you use is not totally unlike Vaseline and gets all over the place, the Slush machine was pretty simple with only a few mechanical parts to worry about and pretty straight forward instructions on how to do it. The Soft Serve Machine on the other hand is a totally different kettle of fish, the company even send out a DVD showing the boss of the company that supplied the machine pulling a machine apart, lubeing it up and putting it back together again. Unfortunately the disc they sent was one that they had burnt and didn’t work on any of the equipment we had at home so we were unable to swat up at home first, luckily we did manage to get it working on Ians laptop and tried to follow it step by step. It would probably have been easier if the machine they had been working on had been the same as the one that we had just bought, but we think we got it right in the end.
We filled up the Slush machine with liquid and switched it on, no leaks, beaters were working, this was going to be a doddle.
We then tried to plug in the Soft Serve machine so that we could clean the drums and load up the Ice Cream mix, we had already Cleaned, Sanitised and lubricated the moving parts, all we had to do was Clean and Sanitise the Drums or Hoppers where the Ice Cream is made and stored.
Carolyn crawled under the shelf to plug the machine in and came back out again saying that the plug wouldn’t fit, it would appear that over here a 15 amp plug is a different size to a standard 10 amp plug and the plug socket we have fits a 10 amp plug.
Bloody marvellous, we have just spent the best part of a nice afternoon, pulling apart and putting back together an Ice Cream machine with a plug that’s too big for the socket.
Back in the UK we had loads of equipment in the kitchen drawing this amount and more power, if they were fitted with a plug they fitted into a plug socket, if the needed something more than a standard plug they were hard wired in, it was simple. It didn’t even occur to us that it would be any different over here, yes the plugs are a different shape, but a plug is a plug as far as we thought.
Our Soft Serve machine is supplied with a plug rather than having to be hard wired, and all the blah about the machine tells how economical it is, and how, unlike other machines it will work on single phase rather than three phase, how could we have possibly known there would be a difference.
If we had known the difference it would have meant that we had a sound knowledge of such things and would have opted to come out here on the much easier skills visa as an electrician, rather than our Business one.
We went home a bit disgruntled at the thought of not being able to use the Soft Serve Machine, hopefully we will be able to get the plug changed tomorrow.
This evening we all sat down with Fish and Chips in front of the telly and watched Around the World in Eighty Days.

5 comments:

Ganeida said...

Um, mamaOlive & I had quite a conversation about plugs. If you think we're odd think about the states who don't even have off switches! Yikes is what I think. Hope your icream machine is sorted soon.

Anonymous said...

Hope you feel better soon :)

bird from up over...

Little Nut Tree said...

Plug do seem to be extraordinarily complicated everywhere else. I have also noticed this!

The HoJo's said...

We had thought we could get the plug changed, but nope, we have to get a sparks in to upgrade the socket, which means I have to buy gas fryers (don't ask) which means I need a gas fitter to come in and connect a new bottled gas supply as the old one comes from too far away and is too weak, and the fryers will take a month to come from out East and waaaah I still have no new fluffy ice cream to sell :o(

The HoJo's said...

and thank you bird, but I think you need some looking after too yes?

xc