Happy Easter!

May God bless you and give a happy Easter for you and your family!

Link European

Eric Escott, the manager from Link European was a guest in our church at the morning service this Sunday. He mentioned that the Link European is in close contact with a charity named Link Romania. Also he mentioned that Link European is sending over to Romania many shoe boxes with all sorts of gifts just around Christmas time.
In private I had a little chat and I was told that in case we need similar shoe boxes for the hospital, than he can be contacted and asked for. He remembered the North Nibley Romania Team.
If you want to follow the idea, you can talk to him about this...

Survey team

Mina 1 Mai, these days

Between the 27 February and 5 March the NNRT team visited Romania. Matt Bigwood and John Anyon, came to do the survey trip, discuss with hospital officials, taking many photos and videos...
We had a productive meeting with the head nurse. They also had the chance to meet Dr. Iordache, even just for a short time. Also met Dr. Boesan (Ropotan's daughter), and the majority of the staff.
The head nurse was thankful for all she received, as for the summer projects it was suggested to capture more springs to add them to the existing water reservoir, a new drying area for clothes with roofing on it, more roof tiles for the 2 buildings, reparations on dining room tables and perhaps a few new chairs, continuing the rewiring of the hospital, new sockets, switches and tubes, perhaps more food...

While the team was here, I met the Mormon team (LDS church) led by Mr. Val Lofgreen, who came over, did the shopping at the Metro 1 and Metro 2, bought the following things for the hospital: big industrial sewing machine, second hand sewing machine, second hand knitting machine, circular saw blades, big pots with lids, stainless steel mugs, industrial ironing machine, a household ironing machine, cloth dryers, plastic buckets...
I am happy that between the shoppings I got a new digital camera Panasonic, which I am going to use from now on. I am thankful for the Mormon team on behalf of the hospital, who came over from Bucharest just to help buying the above items to the hospital.

I had a very good week with Matt and John. The weather was good to us most of the time, except the last 2 days. I must say that I admire the dedication of Matt and John who came here for a week, do the charity work. It was quite obvious that Matt is a famous person back home, receiving many phonecalls while in Romania, even on the road back to Bucharest... I am not saying that John is not as famous, as far as I know John left his phone back home.

We have visited all the hospital, many of the wards, the new carpenter workshop, the former carpenter workshop, the new boiler house... Our old burner, fuel injector is now rubbish, including the the old boiler too. In fact just outside of the hospital is a pile of rubbish, mostly heavy iron, they need some machinery to lift that up and remove it.

It is true that the head nurse suggested that we could use some old iron for the new drying area, but I do not reccomand it really: firstly because they are old and very rusty, and secondly because the management form Brasov might just take it from there and sell it by the summer.

The hospital now wants to buy many trees to make an orchid out there.

Matt and John gave out cigarettes for patients. It is true we do not encourage anyone to smoke, quite the opposite, but it seemed these poor fellows would give anything for a cigarette.
Also on the last day we have been shopping food from Metro 1 for about 240 Pounds plus some gifts for the staff, and they were very happy.

Matt signing documents

When we left they did not knew where exaclty will install the new sewing machine. At the beginning it was said that they will install at the sewing ladies room , but there is no 380V required and they would need about 40m cable plus socket to make it. That's why they said that is possible to install it at the existing OT room, where actually it seems they do have the 380V.
That would certainly raise the question if the exisiting OT room will remain as it is now?

Also at the transport a plastic handle of the machine has broken and they would need a very strong glue to fix it.

We have been in the new dispensary, fixed the pipe under the toilet sink. With the mould there is a bigger issue, it can not be cleansed just like that.
We have been at the school and kindergarten, met Garofita there.

Within the week we only had 1 day off on Saturday 1 March, when we were in Poiana Brasov and later in Brasov and on the mount Tampa.

John's photo - our family

Matt and John also been at our place and John did many photos of our family, for what I am very thankful.

At the Sergiana

We have been at the Sergiana restaurant from the center of Brasov which did not seemed as nice as it is advertised. If you have claustrophobia you certainly must avoid it, as it's like an underground cellar. The usual Casa Tudor is a much nicer place.

The refurbished boiler room

I do not want to forget that the road now between Mina 1 Mai and Codlea is very bad. It's true last October they repaired it parts of it, but on areas where no reparations were made, are just absolutely disaster to drive. Especially in Coldea next to the paint factory's corner, and around the entrance to Mina 1 Mai. Here we had to drive VERY slowly. As local elections are due on 1 June 2008, who knows perhaps it will be repaired? If not, perhaps in 2012?

Spring is coming?

Yesterday I was in Mina 1 Mai, checked the dispensary, been at the school, at the flat and hospital. They are waiting for the guests, and all has been fine. The central heating system is finished, in fact now John the painter is decorating the room of the doctors.
Up in the flat all was OK, put some things in the fridge and turned it on.
The plan is that Thursday morning to meet the head nurse and the doctor, Friday morning I go to the Metro with the LDS church elders and buy things for the hospital and deliver there.
Fitted a new rear door spring on the car.
The school building has new roof as well and they have now a new boiler room building at the back. And a lot of mud.
In fact a lot of mud everywhere in Mina. It looks like spring is coming...
Now I have to wash the car and go... to the airport.

A few more things

I have discussed with the head nurse and she confirmed that the burst pipe is now repaired. I really hope so, and hope that is well done. I had a meeting with the dentist in Brasov, discussed a few things, she may need some more medicines, and if so , she will give me a list and I will purchase for her. Also she was complaining about the water heater which is broken down (almost like always), water is leaking there and she can't use it. I suggested to discuss with the plumber, and I will tell this to the plumber and head nurse.
Monday or Tuesday I shall meet the LDS Church humanitarian aid elders, and it looks like we shall make a big shopping for the hospital from the Metro. I have already purchased 4 circular saw blades and a second hand sewing machine for the hospital, which was on their list.
Wednesday I will go to the airport to meet Matt and John and spend a week with them.
The weather is getting warmer, snow is melting and there is a lot of mud and water around.

Banta Singh Letter to Bill Gates

Dear Mr. Bill Gates,

This letter is from Banta Singh from Punjab. We have bought a computer for our home and we found problems, which I want to bring to your notice.
1. After connecting to Internet we planned to open e-mail account and whenever we fill the form in Hotmail in the password column, only ****** appears, but in the rest of the fields whatever we typed appears, but we face this problem only in password field. We checked with hardware vendor Santa Singh and he said that there is no problem in keyboard. Because of this we open the e-mail account with password *****. I request you to check this as we ourselves do not know what the password is.
2. We are unable to enter anything after we click the 'shut down ' button.
3. There is a button 'start' but there is no "stop" button. We request you to check this.
4. We find there is 'Run' in the menu. One of my friend clicked 'run ' has ran upto Amritsar! So, we request you to change that to "sit", so that we can click that by sitting.
5. One doubt is that any 're-scooter' available in system? As I find only 're-cycle', but I own a scooter at my home.
6. There is 'Find' button but it is not working properly. My wife lost the door key and we tried a lot for tracing the key with this ' find', but unable to trace. Is it a bug??
7. Every night I am not sleeping as I have to protect my 'mouse' from CAT, So I suggest u to provide one DOG to kill that cat.
8. Please confirm when u are going to give me money for winning 'HEARTS' (playing cards in games) and when are u coming to my home to collect ur money.
9. My child learnt 'Microsoft word' now he wants to learn 'Microsoft sentence', so when u will provide that?

Best regards,
Banta Singh

Patients sleeping on doors!!!!

According to the European Union standards there is a limit now how many beds can actually be in each hospital ward. This law will be valid gradually in the whole country. In order to accomplish these demands many hospitals have removed beds to make more room in each ward, to meet these standards.
By removing these beds unfortunately the number of patients are not decreasing.

So in such situation is the main Brasov County Emergency Hospital, who removed the "unnecessary" beds, and now patients have to sleep, on... doors!

You read right, on doors! And this is happenning in the centre of Brasov. Comparing to this our friends in Mina 1 Mai have a better accommodation. They surely deserve it.

Important! I was thinking hard and hard again, what to do with the patients who have incontinence. This is a real problem as nappies are expensive. And finally I magicly found the solution! See below my soution for patients with incontinence:

Do you like the vehicle? Just wonder if we can register it? (That was a joke)