SPW Communications MB Post 1

I like Brickmania. They are a company that produces lego sets and books, and sells specialised parts and lego kits dealing with military history, modern military equipment, and some stuff from science fiction.

My favourite stuff of theirs is the WWII military vehicles and weapons. I especially like their instruction books for kits they have made or sell. These instruction books give you step by step instructions on how to build different things from whatever the topic of the book is, like airplanes, tanks, artillary, and other vehicles. If you're interested in these kinds of instruction books, here is a link to the book, Rats & Foxes, which is all about the North African Campaign. 

One of my favourite designs from the Rats and Foxes instruction book, is that for the GMC 30 CWT Truck of the British LRDG.

Another interesting fact about these books is they give you the history or details about the set you will build. Here is the information about the 30 CWT of the LRDG.

"The long distances of the patrols required special vehicles for which civilian trucks were acquired and customised to the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) needs. Each patrol contained several heavily modified GMC 30 CWT (imperial hundredweight) trucks, each carrying a three man crew and a variety of heavy weapons and supplies. Special equipment included sand channels attached to the side of each truck, which were also outfitted with extra large radiators connected by a hose to a specially designed condenser canister. This allowed the LRDG trucks to operate over long distances in the extremely hot desert environment."

This is a picture of the kit for the Opel Blitz lightweight truck, which is also an instruction set in the book Rats and Foxes.

Finally, if you'd like to learn more about the North African Campaign during WWII, Wikipedia has a nice informative article to get the basics.

British Crusader tank passes a destroyed and smoking German Panzer IV tank during Operation Crusader, November 1941

Italian Empire in November of 1942

A British Matilda Mk II named "Glenorchy" of Major K.P. Harris, MC, commander of 'D' Squadron, 7th Royal Tank Regiment during Operation Compass displaying an Italian flag captured at Tobruk, 24 January 1941

I hope you found this interesting and have fun learning more about the North Africa Campaign and Brickmania.

SPW Communications MB Brickmania Part 2

 For this post I would like to tell you about something else Brickmania does that is really fun.

They have a YouTube channel called Brickmania TV which tells you about all their products, stores, and places where you can see their displays.

Here is the link to Brickmania TV. They also do videos about new releases.

One of the things I really like about Brickmania TV is that they do reviews of the sets they sell, and also the instruction books, like this one from the book Great War Bricks. Although, technically this is more of a drama of the kits from the book not a straight review.

This is a video on Brickmania TV that is all about a game they came up with called Microbrick Battles. This video is a D-Day battle from World War II. Microbrick Battles are intended to be a a board game played with LEGOs. 

Finally, Brickmania has made one 3+ minute video portraying the Capture of the Amiens Gun from World War I. This video is not only fun, but also educational. In it they give you facts about the real events from this battle using LEGO brick animation. You can check on Wikipedia to see how accurate this video is.

I hope you enjoy exploring Brickmania TV

From 16 June 2020, lost and forgotten, Finally posted in October!

The last time I got out of the house, well, out of the compound, was 8 March for Church. We had a normally busy week planned, and then the husband and #2 Son were going to go hike Mt Kenya. The night they left our house for a scout's house closer to the 6am drop off point, we'd heard about one case of Coronavirus COVID-19 in Kenya. That week-end the kids had ballet and rehearsals for the planned up-coming ballet production of Peter Pan. But, because I have an 18 yr old, he walked them down to the rehearsal, and back, about 2km each way.

My busy week wasn't quite as busy as I'd thought it would be as my youngest and I had gotten a cold and had missed all our fun activities for the week. We were both feeling a little better but still coughing on Sunday the 15th  so we stayed home from church. And then that evening the government here closed all the schools in the country, and locked down the airports. And that was that. When the husband and the son returned from Mt Kenya, exhilarated, and exhausted, we shifted to a new normal of dad home all the time. 

But little else has changed for us. The kids still have ballet multiple times a week, it's just online now, not in person. The homeschool group that three of our kids have been attending for three years is on hiatus, as is Angus' play group. But the kids still talk to their friends online. And they're still working on school same as always. 

Anyway, here's the husband and #2 Son and the other scouts hiking up Mt Kenya, the week before it all went pear shaped!

Life Happens

Originally Written in May 2019

I was showing my 17 yr old how to create a blog and pulled this up as an example. Whoopsie Daisies! I haven't posted here since 2014.

Again, not like anyone really reads this, but hey! If I tried harder, maybe people would. I'm pretty sure that not posting leads to dead blogs, and posting regularly leads to not dead blogs.

Anyway, in the last 5 years we've moved away from the middle of the US to Africa - Huzzah! So I had to change the title of my blog since I'm not living in America right now.

I've thought about the blog a LOT lately because I deal with a lot of cross-cultural things around here. We blend into East African life here because of my being Malaysian on the Inside. There's a lot of cross-over here. This, of course, makes me more comfortable with the culture here than I ever was in the regular 'ole US of A.

My only excuse is that we ended up having a fifth kid, retiring from the Air Force, becoming Lutheran Missionaries, and moving to Kenya in the last 5 years.

Interestingly this has given me more fodder for this blog.

We are once again living the expat life, and loving it.

Now posting in April 2020