Travels to the Osage

I just returned from a 9-day trip to the United States. My stepfather, Bob Daniels, passed away on August 22, so I went to Ponca City, Oklahoma to be with my mom for a week. Bob and my mom got together well after I had left home for college, so I never experienced him as a member of the family in the same way my younger siblings did. Still, I'm going to miss this talented and stubborn man who really had a heart of gold.

My mom faced a rough week while I was there, both as a result of the things that you would normally expect in the wake of the death of a spouse, as well as things that you would not. She's a remarkably strong person who reminds me of the 'Pioneer Woman' represented in a famous statue in Ponca City. After one particularly long day, I headed back to my room at 10:30, completely exhausted, but left my mom still carrying on with her household chores (caring for the many dogs and cats she has rescued over the years) well after midnight. She has a resilience that I'm afraid that I have not yet developed. I hope that her resilience continues to serve her, however, as she is now facing several enormous challenges as she adjusts to a life without her husband.

In Ponca City I ran into other people facing plenty of hardship as well. A jar sat on a counter of a pizza place in an attempt to raise money for an employee's medical attention. I watched two young women trying to come up with just $4 between them to pay for a prescription co-payment at the Walmart pharmacy--they ended up walking away because they didn't have the cash. I saw several young teenagers with babies, including a 15-year-old daughter of one of my mom's former employees. How they survive in an economy as bleak as Ponca's is a mystery to me. I also spent a lot of time listening to and watching CNN and the other cable news stations while I was there. Though I was already aware of the growing animosity to Obama and his plans for healthcare reform, I was shocked by how truly vicious some Americans have become in their opposition. There has never been this much division in American society during my adult life, and I worry about where it's all going to lead.

On my flight back to Australia I felt a little like I was escaping both my family's problems and the nation's. Life here in Brisbane is very good on many levels. And, I guess the price I'm going to pay for this good life is living with the guilt.

Another Young Adventurer

As I sit in front of my computer and ponder the benefits of a corporate membership in the Qantas Club (those layovers at Terminal 4 in LAX are growing old), my admiration goes out to a 16-year-old Aussie girl who plans to sail around the world on her own. Jessica Watson will finish high school by 'long distance education' so that she can embark on her 230-day adventure in September. I must admit that the parent in me wonders how Jessica's mum and dad can let their little girl do this. I have a hard time just imagining Will going off to school in 18 months! On the other hand, as I read Jessica's website and blog, she does strike me as being very much different from your typical teenager. She's been sailing and 'racing dinghies' since she was 8, doesn't watch any television, and seems far more mature than most adults I know. Apparently, this trip will be expensive--A$250,000--so, in addition to the aid of several corporate sponsors, there's a fancy dinner ($100 per person) scheduled next week to help her raise the funds.

I know that I'll be closely following Jessica's journey in the coming months. I have long had a love for the tales of adventurers, which was born in my early adolescence during those travelogues I used to watch at a theater in Dixon, Illinois, was then nurtured through many books by authors like Jon Krakauer and Barbara Savage, and then renewed by all those Michael Palin television series and books. All those people, including teen Jessica, are far more intrepid than this soon-to-be-Qantas-club-member.

The Perils of Preschooler Travel

We're back home in Brisbane. Once again, we're suffering the consequences of transoceanic flying. Jet lag is as rampant in our household as flies in the summer. I'm writing at 3 am because Will was wide awake at 2, just as he was the night before. He's watching 'Ratatouille' and asking why it's still dark outside. V returns to work later today, so I'm trying to let her sleep. I'm staying at home with Will because he's not allowed to go to daycare for a week, simply because he's been to the U.S.

Our trip back to Australia started this past Thursday with a four hour drive from Springfield, IL (where we had been visiting some friends) to Chicago's O'Hare airport. After checking our suitcases, V and Will went through security while I returned the rental car. I didn't return for over an hour because it took nearly 40 minutes in rush hour traffic to find a gas station to refill the tank. We then boarded our plane for Los Angeles. Things went pretty well on that flight, until the final hour when Will decided to empty his bladder on my lap (via a leaky diaper) while we were playing a game on my iPhone. V was able to change him in the plane's toilet (how she does that is still a mystery to me), but I had to wait until we could pick up our suitcases from baggage claim for my own change.

We then hauled our bags to the Bradley International terminal to check in for our Qantas flight. Extremely lucky for us, our tickets were upgraded to Premium Economy and we got to sit together. Our 11:30 pm flight was delayed 45 minutes, however, so by the time we boarded Will was acting like a drunk pirate. In fact, he fell asleep while the plane was still taxing. V and I got to enjoy a wonderful dinner (complete with a white tablecloth) and movie while Will continued to doze. It was about five hours into the flight, after all the other passengers had fallen asleep, that Will woke up screaming at the top of his lungs. He never really opened his eyes much, but he was completely unhappy with his seat. Because the fancy seats in Premium Economy don't have moveable armrests, I couldn't have him lie across my lap. He soon was bellowing at maximum volume, and we could do nothing to soothe him. I picked him up and took him to the lavatory. There I rocked him for about 15 minutes until he stopped crying and coughing (all those tears got him very congested). I was a little worried that a flight attendant would hear all the coughing and report us to the health officials when we landed. Alas, Will did finally fall asleep. I carried him back to the seat where he slept a few more hours. The rest of the flight went pretty well, even after he woke up again with five hours to go.

In Sydney we faced the same bedlam that I experienced 2 1/2 years ago when I came over for my job interview. Since then I have always flown directly to Brisbane to avoid the connection, but we couldn't do that this time. Sydney is the major entry point for Australia, and it appears that most of the international flights arrive there within the same hour each morning. With four or five 747s emptying their bellies at the same time, the immigration and customs lines quickly look like the freeways of LA at rush hour. Will soon became bored and we had to keep him from climbing between people's legs and opening their suitcases. The worst part about flying into Sydney, however, is the connection to the domestic flight. Qantas makes you take all your bags to the other side of the international terminal where there was a one-hour wait to drop them off (even though they had been tagged back in Los Angeles). While we waited, Will sat perched on top of two suitcases on a trolley, playing with my iPhone. As we neared the front of line, the staff suddenly called our flight (we were getting close to missing it by this point, even though I scheduled a nearly 3-hour layover). As we pushed our trolleys into the "express" lane, Will rolled off the trolley and hit his head on the floor. He was OK, but his crying alarmed the Qantas staff, who quickly put us at the front of the line. Gee, if I had known that a little head banging would have sped things up, I might have tried that trick earlier!

After finally taking a shuttle to the domestic terminal, we almost immediately boarded our flight to Brisbane. Will slept the entire flight, but was delighted when we pulled into our gate in Brissy because he knew we were home. He was smiling nearly the entire 40-min taxi ride to Graceville. When I unlocked the front door, he ran to his toys and immediately started putting together his train tracks. V and I hauled our five suitcases up the steps and then crashed on the sofa.

And they lived happily ever after.

Chigger Redux

Sure, we get all sorts of nasty bugs down in Australia. And, sure, we don't have window screens (a.k.a. "fly screens") on our house in Brisbane, thus making it that much easier for various antipodean insects to come bother us in our pajamas. But, none of those bugs are as irritating as chiggers in Arkansas! Amazingly, I mentioned this in a blog entry during our last family visit to Hot Springs two years ago, and here I am again scratching away as I write this.

Chiggers our particularly bothersome because you never see them. They lie in wait in the grass, in bushes, or benches, ready to leap onto your body undetected. They then lay larvae on your body, which crawl around until they find a cozy place to take hold. This description from an Ohio State website says it best:

The preferred feeding locations on people are parts of the body where clothing fits tightly over the skin such as around the belt line, waistline, under girdles and under socks, or where the flesh is thin, tender or wrinkled such as the ankles, in the armpits, back of the knees, in front of the elbow, or in the groin.

Chigger larvae do not burrow into the skin, nor suck blood. They pierce the skin and inject into the host a salivary secretion containing powerful, digestive enzymes that break down skin cells that are ingested (tissues become liquefied and sucked up). Also, this digestive fluid causes surrounding tissues to harden, forming a straw-like feeding tube of hardened flesh (stylostome) from which further, partially-digested skin cells may be sucked out. After a larva is fully fed in four days, it drops from the host, leaving a red welt with a white, hard central area on the skin that itches severely and may later develop into dermatitis. Any welts, swelling, itching, or fever will usually develop three to six hours after exposure and may continue a week or longer. If nothing is done to relieve itching, symptoms may continue a week or more.

I'm scratching in all sorts of difficult-to-reach places. Won't I have a fun time on our long plane ride back to Oz on Thursday night?

A Whirlwind

The American ex-pats who live in Oz will greatly appreciate this picture. It was taken at a Kohl's in Coralville, IA, where V., Will, and I had a spontaneous orgy of shopping after discovering the store directly across from the gas station where I was filling up the rental car. It was nearly 6:00 on a Monday, and I said, "I bet that store is open until at least 7." Of course, we nearly went crazy when we saw the generous opening hours--and it was only Monday night! Back in Brisbane, there's usually only one evening any store is open (Thursday, in our neck of the woods), so we don't even think about shopping after 5 anymore.

My friend Diane will want to kill me when she reads this entry. You see, she lives very close to the location of this photo, and I had just told her a few days before that we weren't planning to drive through Iowa. Well, I had a very sudden change of plans, as I was really desperate to see Iowa again. We stopped briefly in beautiful downtown Iowa City for a cup of coffee at the Java House and a loud tantrum next to the Englert, and then we drove out to the City Park so that Will could have some time at the playground. And then we were off again...a total of 60 minutes in I.C., maybe, until we were detoured in Coralville. After saving nearly $250 there, by the way, we drove to a Des Moines surburb to stay at a Holiday Inn Express (how utterly luxurious!). Today we proceeded south on I-35 through Madison County (home of the "Bridges Of..."), across the border to Missouri, and straight on to Kansas City. Unlucky for us, we endured severe weather, complete with tornado watches and warnings, for the next six hours. We briefly stopped off in Lawrence, KS, to see the University of Kansas, and then it was on to Topeka (where there's actually a National Historic Site for the Brown v. Board of Education decision), and south to Wichita, and finally Ponca City, Oklahoma, where we rest now.  There were moments during the final hour of the drive that were utterly terrifying as the visibility dropped to about 10 feet in blinding rain. V. said it was the scariest 10-minutes of her life.

Next time, Diane, we will definitely stop by your ranch, I promise!

Lagging

It's 4:41 am in Rockford, Illinois. It's very early dawn, and I am listening to a lovely concerto of  North American birds singing outside the window. I've been awake for about three hours--ever since Will started playing with my toes at the end of the bed. I responded by lying down next to him until he fell asleep an hour later. Then I was too wide awake, so I came out to my brother's living room to surf the web. Our trip across the world on Thursday was very long. Our plane in Brisbane was delayed nearly an hour. Then our plane from Los Angeles to Chicago was delayed two hours due to a mechanical problem.  Will was excellent for the largest part of the 20 hours we travelled. He spent a lot of time watching the in-flight entertainment system, and he slept (on me) for nearly six hours during the first flight, and another two during the second. We couldn't sit together as a family on either flight because both planes were full and something happened to our original seat assignments. We finally got to Rockford at 10:30, but didn't go to bed until 1 am. All three of us slept until 11:30 the next day (yesterday).

That's a lot of detail about sleep. You can see what's on my mind. In fact, I'm suddenly tired, so I'm going to try to go back to bed before there's too much daylight.  Good night or good morning or whatever suits.

Hog Heaven

Kahneman and Tversky published a series of influential psychology articles in the 1970s about heuristics--the mental shortcuts that we all take when processing the constant bombardment of information that is inflicted on us during every waking moment. One of these is the availability heuristic, which, according to the Wikipedia entry, is a cognitive bias "in which people base their prediction of the frequency of an event or the proportion of the population based on how easily an example can be brought to mind." I've been lecturing about the availability heuristic for years in my social psychology courses. One example I always mention was how a friend of mine in graduate school refused to fly on DC-10s after just one high-profile crash in Iowa, even though DC-10s at the time had one of the best safety records of all aircraft.

Well, right now I'm suffering from the power of the availability heuristic as it pertains to the swine flu "pandemic." And I'm not the only one--emergency rooms in New York City are full of people who think they have the swine flu:  “The consensus among these physicians,” said Dr. Steven J. Davidson, the chairman of the hospital’s emergency medicine department, “is that the influenza is mild but the patients are unusually scared.”  Here in Australia the frequency of swine flu stories in the news has noticeably increased in the past week.  Some newspapers give daily Australian "swine flu tolls," as if they were counting deaths from the flu, although no one here has actually died in the over 170 cases that have been reported. Today's Courier-Mail included several pages of coverage to the swine flu, which included a major story about a cruise ship that has been sort of quarantined at the Great Barrier Reef (but the passengers continue to "party on," as one Brisbane bloke told a reporter). Another story was about the fact that the state and federal governments are now requiring that all children who travel to countries with high rates of swine flu (e.g., the United States) must stay at home for seven days when they return to Oz.

Why is this causing me a problem? Well, we are scheduled to leave next Thursday for the U.S. with our 3-year-old in tow (who looked very much like that boy in the picture above when he was younger!). V. and I have thought seriously about cancelling our trip, and waiting until next year to try to travel again.  We would lose lots of money if we did so, and we (and my family members) would be very disappointed.  But, you know, it's our son that we're talking about here.

But, alas, we have decided to stick to the facts. The fatality rate from the swine flu is about the same as any strain of influenza, and, our chances of getting the flu (of any strain) are probably no greater when going to the U.S. now than staying around here where it seems our colleagues and friends are coming down with all sorts of viruses (remember, the flu season has just begun in the southern hemisphere).  I had a flu "jab" a few weeks ago that is supposed to inoculate me from both Brisbane strands of the virus (dubbed last year as "more deadly than any seen in the past two decades in Britain"). 

Damn you, availability heuristic, I'm going to stick to the facts this time when estimating the probability...

On My Way Home

I am writing this entry on Saturday morning. I am still in Atlanta, but soon I'll begin my journey back to Brisbane, where I'll arrive in about 32 hours. My first twelve days here involved visiting family members in the Midwest. I drove over 1400 miles (2200 km) on that part of the trip, which included a tense three hours dodging the cars in front of me that were sliding off the road during a snowstorm. I then spent four days in Atlanta because I needed to work on some research projects here. I also wanted to see quite a few of our old friends, so I ended up scheduling little two-hour visits with as many people as possible. I met five babies who were born since we left the country. I had dinner twice one night. I stayed up late each night talking with different friends, but then woke up early the next day to have breakfast with someone else. I am now exhausted and hope that I can enjoy my two long plane trips without having to engage in conversation with anyone but the flight attendant about my drink choices.

Besides seeing all these friends and family members, I did get to experience things that are hard to come by in Australia. These included Jiff peanut butter, Taco Bell and Chilli's (but also some real Mexican food too), very hot chicken wings (labelled 'Death' at one restaurant), Walmart, hours of listening to CNN and NPR (mainly on my rental car's radio), American television commercials, chicken fried steak, USA Today, Hampton Inn, cheap shopping, and much more. Yes, I enjoyed all of this, but I have had my fill of "America" for at least another year. I now look forward to the heat and humidity of a Brisbane summer, the inane Mel and Kochie on "Sunrise," flat whites, buying fresh fruits and veggies (and the rest of our groceries) at our local shopping mall, Aussie accents, high toilets and bathroom counters, driving (and walking) on the left side, expensive books, my friends, and, most of all, V. and Will.

The First Day of Summer

December 1 is the first day of summer in Australia. It seems appropriate then that today I am getting to experience the first snowstorm of the season here in northern Illinois. Right now my nieces are frolicking around in the first couple of inches that have fallen, but I am worrying about how this will affect my travel plans of driving 11 hours to Arkansas tomorrow. Tonight the wind is supposed to pick up and cause drifting on the roads. Lucky me.

Arrival

I'm in the midst of a six-hour layover in Denver. My journey from Australia to Arkansas began 24 hours ago, and I still have five hours left. I'm beginning to feel a bit punchy as a result. Perhaps that explains why I've seen so many angry people in America today. Or, perhaps that's because the number of travellers has picked up in advance of next week's Thanksgiving holiday. Or, perhaps a lot of people aren't as happy about Obama winning as I thought. Or, perhaps Aussies are even more mellow than I realized.

I did manage to see my old friends, Tiffany and Dave, and their beautiful son, Ryan, for 30 minutes at a gate here, just before they boarded their flight. And I managed a garbled conversation with V. and Will back in Brisbane via Skype and free Wi-Fi, courtesy of the Denver airport. I also got to eat a bagel (Einstein Bros.) and a cinnamon roll from Cinnabon, and I'll be eating Mexican tonight for dinner (sorry, Mooselet!). Travelling isn't so bad.

An Australian Micronation (Since 1970)

Not long ago I came across an internet reference to the Principality of Hutt River. I have never heard any Australian speak about this "micronation," or come across it on the news. But, at 75 square kilometers (over 18,500 acres), and about 500 km from Perth in Western Australia, I was surprised that I didn't even know it existed. The story, as I can gather from various websites, including this Wikipedia entry, is that it was originally founded by Leonard George Casley in 1970 as a result of a dispute he had with the Australian government over quotas on wheat. In his interpretation of Australian and British law, Prince Leonard (as he is now known) argued that he could legally secede from Australia, although the government of Australia has never recognized the secession. Interestingly, an exhibit at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra does seem to acknowledge Prince Leonard's act as legitimate. The principality itself has few inhabitants, but issues its own stamps and coins (which are collected worldwide), has commissioned naval officers, issues car registrations and passports (over 13,000 to date), and receives off-shore company registrations. Looking around the site, I was amazed to see that Princess Cruises recently offered an excursion to the principality so that passengers could have "tea with the prince." In this picture you can see Prince Leonard standing at the left while the Princess passengers enjoy their tea:
How did so many people know about this? And, what was the attraction in visiting such an out-of-the-way place? I do think it's pretty cool that Australians have tolerated this whole enterprise. I suppose that any such move in the United States would quickly end up with some sort of stand-off with the FBI and ATF. If you happen to have visited the Principality of Hutt River, please leave me a comment. I think it would make an interesting holiday destination (check out the pictures at this fellow's website):

Lagged

We are home in Brisbane safe and sound. Of course, all three of us are messed up with jet lag and major sleep deprivation. Will didn't sleep at all during our second flight from Singapore to Brisbane, but he did sleep from 8 am to 7 pm once we got home. Now it's 4:51 am on Thursday and Will is watching "In the Night Garden" on a DVD that we bought in England. I have been wide awake since 1:30, worrying about everything I have to do in the next three weeks (before I leave for another overseas trip). It also gives me a chance to update you about what I have been doing for the past week.

The photo above is of the harbour in Opatija, Croatia. As you can see, it is a beautiful place. In fact, I was impressed with the beauty of nearly every part of Croatia I saw on this trip, from the small villages that look like their Italian counterparts in Tuscany to the mountain ranges that have been tackled by a series of amazingly long tunnels. The tourism board advertises that Croatia is "The Way the Mediterranean Used to Be" because it is fairly undeveloped and uncrowded, compared to other parts of Europe. I did notice lots of major construction going on, however, so it is likely that Croatia will "catch up" to those places in a few years.

I skipped the last day of the conference to go on a day trip to Venice, arranged by a local tourist agency. My colleague Aarti and I took a 2-hour bus ride to the port city of Porec, where we then boarded a boat for another 3-hour trip in choppy seas to Venice. It rained for the first two hours we were there. Walking down all those narrow alleys with umbrellas was challenging. We had only six hours in the city, so I separated from Aarti to find some of my favourite spots that I had discovered on one of my previous two trips to Italy. I didn't have a map, so I became a rat in a maze, running into blind alleys and assorted dead ends. Of course, this was Venice, so being lost wasn't such a bad thing. I finally ended up at Scuola Grande di Rocco, which is the site of Tintoretto's own "Sistine Chapel." I am a sucker for 16th Century religious paintings...Finally, after a quick 30-minute water taxi ride around the city, we boarded our boat at 5:00 for the 5-hour trip back to Opatija.

The next day I headed to London, which became an ordeal because the trip involved a long bus ride to Zagreb, two flights that connected in Frankfurt, a landing at Heathrow where I saw Air Force One parked (Bush was in London), a 45-minute ride on the London Tube from Heathrow to Victoria Station because there was no room on the airport bus that I planned to take, and then a train ride from Victoria Station to Brighton, where V. and her dad picked me up at 10 pm. The next day was spent with V.'s family and Will playing in their garden. When we began packing up the car in the afternoon, we found Will sitting in his car seat by the front door, all ready to go. If only he could carry a suitcase or two! We took a two-hour bus ride back to Heathrow, where we waited around the airport for another four hours. We finally took off for the first leg of our trip at 10 pm, arriving in Singapore 12 hours later. The Singapore airport is fantastic. We were at the newest terminal (3), which rivals any major shopping center and it includes gardens, waterfalls, a free cinema, and plenty of cafés and restaurants. Will spent a lot of time at the indoor playground with some other kids. I was excited to see the new double-decker Airbus 380 parked at one gate. I got a few hours of sleep on the first flight, and none on the second because Will was wide awake and raring to go the whole time. It didn't help matters that Singapore Airlines likes to spend the first three hours of each flight with all the lights on so that they can serve you "dinner" in the middle of the night. Then, just after you have had time to digest your food for a few hours in the dark, they turn on all the lights again to serve you breakfast. Ugh!

But now we are back in the land of clean air, uncrowded places, and silly breakfast TV shows. I must say that I am really glad (and lucky) that we live in Australia. Sure, it's a pain to get here from anywhere else in the world, but it always feels a bit like coming back to paradise (and now, "home") when I step off the plane.

Croatia Wins!

Greetings from Opatija, Croatia. I realize that many of you may not know exactly where Croatia is, so here's a map to help orient you to my present location:


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I am attending a conference meeting of the European Association of Experimental Social Psychology, which occurs every three years. It's really not that different from any other conference that I attend, except that there are many more smokers. I can't remember the last time I was at a coffee break with a bunch of academics and had cigarette smoke blow into my face, as happens every morning and afternoon here. Croatians themselves like to smoke, and the restaurants I have visited don't have separate smoking sections. Perhaps you would like a little Camel smoke with your cheese strudel? This is your place!

Opatija is an old seaside town, with many small hotels overlooking a beautiful harbor. My guidebook says that it is a popular holiday destination for people from all over Europe. Someone told me that tourists from the Czech Republic like to bring along all their own food on vacation, and therefore don't contribute much to the local restaurant business. Thus, a controversial proposal is being floated to ban the bringing of food into the country by visitors, which the Czechs very much resent. I suppose another group of tourists unhappy with the Croatians today are the Germans, who were thrashed last night in the Euro 2008 soccer tournament. My room overlooks the main street through Opatija, so I got to watch (and hear) crowds of red and white checkered Croatians celebrate underneath my window well past midnight. There were even a few sirens now and then, so perhaps things got a little too wild.Tomorrow I am skipping the conference to take a day trip to Venice. We're only a couple of hours away, so how could I resist my third visit to that spectacular place? It's been nine years since I was last there, but I imagine things haven't changed very much. More later...

Tragic Biographies

I am writing this entry from a hotel room located just a few hundred yards (or meters) from one of the runways of Heathrow airport in western London. We have been in England for about 10 days visiting V's family at a holiday resort in Lowestoft, which is in Suffolk on the east coast. Consistent with V's predictions, it rained nearly six days in a row. Our resort was sort of a sad place, with no internet connections and few people under the age of 70. Will has been doing great the whole time--even the marathon pair of flights via Singapore went well. This morning I am leaving them behind in Brighton while I attend a conference in Croatia. Now that I am back in the land of the living, I hope to be blogging regularly again.

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About the title of this entry: it was the name of a section at a WH Smith bookstore in Lowestoft. I like the idea that when someone happens to be in the mood for a "tragic biography," they can easily find it there...

New Zealand Photos

Today I posted some photos from my New Zealand trip on Flickr (the same ones that appear on Facebook, my FB friends!). I found it quite hard to take pictures with our little Fujifilm FinePix--without my glasses I can't see the little video display when aiming the camera. :-(

Post Trip

Yes, I am back in the land of the kangaroo, the emu, and "Spicks and Specks"-- feeling quite energised, although I feel I could sleep for a week.  I'll be posting pictures here later in the week. Perhaps the biggest shock of the trip came from my continuing battle with the telecoms in this part of the world.  Using my mobile in New Zealand to make calls to Australia was expensive (about $3/minute*), and a 10-minute call from my hotel room cost me $80.  I didn't use the internet much either, as the hotel charged $30/day for the service.  Despite those minor inconveniences, I look forward to seeing more of NZ on a future trip.  The South Island is still my undiscovered territory.

*All prices roughly converted to Australian currency.

Idle Idol

I'm off to Wellington, New Zealand for a social psychology conference for the next few days. Unfortunately, Will and V. won't be coming along this time. As you can see in this picture, however, V. will have plenty of entertainment to keep her occupied. I'll try to post once or twice while I'm in NZ. I have never been there before, so there's much to anticipate. And I'm also looking forward to cooler weather...

Diversion

Just a quick note to say that I am back in Brisbane. However, I did experience a little "diversion" on the way from Los Angeles. Just after we crossed the International Date Line, the pilot announced that we were taking a "hard turn" towards Nadi, Fiji. It turned out that Brisbane was forecast to have heavy fog during our scheduled 6 am arrival, so that meant that we wouldn't have enough fuel if we were forced to circle around waiting for the fog to clear. Therefore, we had to land in Fiji to get more fuel! From my seat (three away from the window), I could see the country is beautiful, mountainous, and very green. It also looked sparsely populated. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to get off the plane during the refueling, so I wasn't able to see much more. Soon after we were airborne again, I used the plane's satellite phone system to call V. so that she would know I would be arriving three hours late.

Finally, when I got through customs at 10 am in Brisbane (they had to scan my bags because I declared my peanut butter), I walked out into the central arrivals area and heard a little scream of delight from my son. Will's face lit up when he saw me. I picked him up right away and he gave me a very tight hug, not letting go for several minutes. How wonderful! And, of course, V. was glad to see me too!

I'm home at last.

Flying with Trojans

I am in the middle of a 36-hour journey back to Australia, currently waiting at LAX for the 11:30 p.m. flight to Sydney. I arrive in Brisbane at 6 am on Tuesday. First, however, my trip began at 6:30 a.m. Sunday when I checked out of my hotel in Savannah. My friend Yuki and I then drove four hours to Atlanta. I returned my rental car to Enterprise (luckily, they didn’t notice the damage inflicted on the car by a homeless man with a wheelbarrow in the Virginia-Highland neighborhood where we had dinner on Tuesday), and flew to Chicago. I made some calls to my family there and received some sad news about my aunt, whom I will write about later. I grew even sadder as I thought about the great distance that I will soon be from my family once more. At the gate for the flight to LA I noticed a large number of USC Trojan fans, including members of the marching band, were waiting to board. I went to grad school at USC, and was affiliated with the university for nine years, but I haven’t kept up with its football team. This weekend, I quickly learned, was the classic USC-Notre Dame game, and yesterday these fans had watched the Trojans crush the Fighting Irish on their home field.

As our plane pulled away from the gate and the safety video started to play, I was happily surprised to watch at least half the passengers (i.e., the Trojan students and other fans) begin to interact synchronously with what was going on on the screen. I don’t know how it was organized, or whether this is some new cultural phenomenon based on a recent movie, but everybody really did the same thing at the same moment. For example, when the narrator mentioned that the seatbelts should be fastened, a steady clicking noise started to swell as all the passengers clicked their belts. When the video showed the oxygen masks fall from the ceiling, people made a loud blowing noise throughout the plane. When the exits were identified in the video, dozens of hands started to make waving gestures towards to the various doors. And when the film finished, everyone clapped. It was perfect. It was a bit like going to the "Rocky Horror Picture Show" back in college, in fact.

I feel especially happy to be an American tonight... and a (lapsed) Trojan!

P.S. This is my 100th post!!

Touchdown in L.A.

I'm here...posting another blog entry at about the same time I did today (yesterday or tomorrow, or whenever). I’m sitting in the American Airlines terminal at LAX across from a Starbucks (where else?!) waiting for my flight to Chicago. I had to pay $6 for an hour’s worth of net access, so I’m using the time that I have left (after checking my email) to jot down a few lines here…

My flight was OK. It took nearly two hours of standing in line in Brisbane to check in, however. There were only two employees standing at the nine Economy check-in counters to process a nearly full 747. Sure, there were two counters open in Business class too, but that didn’t really help things. As a result of this staffing shortage, our plane left nearly an hour late, after several of us had to run to the gate when they made the final boarding call, just seconds after we got our boarding pass.

Anyway, I made it. I sat next to a very large woman, which made simple things like eating and sleeping a challenge. I watched three movies, several sitcoms, and probably slept an hour or two. Going through immigration and customs here took about 15 minutes. I picked up my rental phone, and walked out into the cool California sunshine. Of course, I was immediately accosted welcomed by three different solicitors begging for money (and I couldn’t even make out what “cause” they were mumbling about as I shooed them away). Back in Australia, I haven’t run into one panhandler yet, and anyone soliciting for charity sits quietly at a card table with a sign. They must come meet up with their American equivalents for some tips!

It does make me smile to hear those bilingual recordings of the LAX public address system and to be barked at once again by an unfriendly TSA agent. It feels almost like home.