Gosford and Collaroy
Feb. 26th, 2005 11:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ljpliceaseThis was the third, somewhat short, week in Australia. I thought I was only going to have another short stint in Collaroy, but as it turns out, I stayed there two nights. This worked out nicely.
Tuesday (22 February 2005)
I walked down to Wyoming to get some post cards and a milkshake. I also snagged an envelope from the post office so that I could post my film to A&I on Friday before leaving. I had a pretty good lunch with my grandma at the Gosford hotel in town. It was typically Australian.
We then drove down to Collaroy and I went swimming. The surf was a little rougher than what I really wanted. Terrigal is much more protected and so calmer. I guess I am more used to that. If you surf, Collaroy would probably be better though. Had dinner with grandma and my Aunty Rae; we were staying with Aunty Rae in Collaroy.
Then I took a walk up to Long Reef point and down to the ocean from there. There is a nice view from the top, but it is even nicer when you walk down to where the surf meets the sand. I was there at about sunset, and the nearly full moon was rising steadily. It reflected nicely off the surf and was generally quite lovely.
Wednesday
I got up at 6am to climb up and down the side of Long Reef point again, so that I could watch and photograph the sunrise. The clouds mostly obscured it, although it did peak its head out briefly to make a stunning entrance. Mostly I made long exposures of the surf crashing on the rocks, hopefully smoothing out on the slide and giving the effect of movement. On the way back I saw a spider web big enough to catch an entire jogger, and I am sure that it wasn't long before it caught one, because there were quite a few rushing by me as I returned.
Caught bus L90 into the city which took me all the way to Central station. From there I walked around town for a while. I made it to the Queen Victoria Building (the "QVB" as the locals call it) where I had a milkshake. The QVB is this huge mall in the center of the city with impressive gothic architecture.
Milkshakes are slightly different in Australia. They have more milk, and air, and less ice cream. They are light and frothy. They are delicious, but unfortunately disappear far too quickly. What you call a milkshake in the US is called a thikshake in Australia. This is probably the reason why Australia is better than America. You can get both types of milkshakes.
Then I walked over to Hyde Park. I decided the trees crating an archway was pretty, but too cliché to photograph (and besides I already had on a previous trip). I walked through the Domain, which is a park. There were a few people playing soccer in the way I imagine there would be a few people playing disc had I been in the states. Then I walked through the Botanical Gardens, which is always a treat. This time the flowers were not out in force, but it was still nice. The flying foxes were hanging out, as usual. Then I walked passed the opera house. I took photographs; trying to avoid the usual clichés. I used my 17mm super wide angle lens and took close-ups. Thinking about it now, I doubt any of the opera house shots will be of any interest at all. Pity.
I took the ferry from Circular Quay to Manly. It was a very pleasant ride. I listened to my iPod as I watched several sailing craft plunge directly for us, in what I was sure was a suicidal heading destined for crash. Each time, however they barely broke past our stern unscathed. I say stern, although when it is going back to Circular Quay, then it is the bow. The sea got choppy as we passed "the heads" where Sydney Cove opens up to the ocean. This is where I saw the ferry Collaroy headed for the Quay. I wonder what the name of our ferry was.
Australians are pretty good about naming vehicles. Each of the harbour ferries are named after Sydney suburbs, and the 747s in QANTAS' fleet are all named after Australian cities. I have several times crossed the Pacific (after which my fileserver, pacific.wdlabs.com, is named btw-) in the City of Gosford. Too bad I am crossing the Pacific in a nameless United jet on this trip. As soon as I get on the Jet it will be like being in America again, whereas when I get on a QANTAS jet in LAX it is like already being in Australia.
Anyway, a number 156 bus was waiting for me and the nice Australian bus driver answered my dumb question "do you go to Collaroy?" very nicely and I had a little joke that the green money in my wallet wouldn't be of any use to me in this transaction. The silly bill was made out of paper rather than plastic!
I noticed an advertisement in the bus for a travel agency which advocated lying to your male boss by to get time off for vacation by making vague inferences to PMS. It also said that your mileage may vary, especially if you are not female. I think in the states that would be considered politically incorrect (I personally will not even touch it; I am just documenting that I saw it). I also think it is "un-American" (possibly a communist plot) in that it publicly encourages abusing the system to get more time off. As though Australians with their five weeks of vacation really need more time off!
When I got back to Auntie Rae's house I was hot and sweaty so I went strait for the beach. The surf was considerably calmer today, for which I was thankful. After dinner I went back up Long Reef Point (again!) and back down to the ocean where I waited for sunset, and watched the moon rise. It was a full moon and this time I was fully equipped with both cameras and my tripod. I took many photographs was still not able to expend all of my film somehow.
As I was walking back to Auntie Rae's house in the dark, I started thinking about the jogger sized spider webs that I had seen there in the morning, and it started weirding me out a bit. The last thing I need is to be bitten by some poisonous Australian spider. We have nine of the ten most deadly venomous animals in existence right here in the country and continent of Australia. We also have non-venomous animals which will also kill you, like great white sharks.
I showed my portfolio to grandma and Aunty Rae. I kept expecting somebody to turn off the TV, so I didn't start showing my pictures right away. Then I realized that they somehow thought that it was appropriate to look at anyone's portfolio - let alone mine - with the distraction of the TV. Ordinarily I would consider it quite rude, but they are family, and they deserve a certain degree of respect due to their wealth of experience. It is also possible that my perspective is skewed because I haven't really watched TV of my own volition in several months, and then only once or twice in the last year and a half.
Thursday
I went back into Sydney first thing in the morning on the bus. This time I went to the powerhouse museum where I was immediately accosted, I mean greeted by one of the many retired volunteers who work at the museum. This seems to be a fairly common phenomenon in Australia. I noticed it in Canberra when we went to Old Parliament House and the High Court. He showed me around a little bit and had little stories on the various different areas of the museum... except the one on computers. He sort of waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the computer exhibit and said in curt detail the computers are down there.
Then he took me over to the Boulton and Watt steam engine where he started talking to the curator, since the other volunteer who usually waxes poetic about the engine was apparently running late. The volunteer who originally greeted me took off and left the curator of the museum to explain to me what the deal was with the steam engine. Apparently it is the only one left of its type left in existence, and it still runs on days in which they have someone to run it. It was actually fairly interesting, but what amused me was that I had the curator of the museum explaining to me what this exhibit was all about.
After that I was finally able to meander about the museum on my own and I found the computer exhibit. Someone had told me about an interactive art/technology exhibit at the museum and I wanted to check it out. I found that, along with some archaic computer equipment... a TRS 80 (also known as the Trash 80) and a PET personal computer. I would have liked to have seen an ATARI or a PDP11 to round out the collection, but I took documenting photographs anyway.
After that I had lunch at Darling Harbour (note: spelled correctly in Australia), which was a beef kebab and a milkshake. I slowly made my way back to Circular Quay and had another milkshake there. Took the ferry (this time riding on the Collaroy) once again to Manly where I once again took the bus back to Collaroy.
I drove back to Gosford shortly after, and we had "chook" (chicken) for dinner. Gramme (pronounced the same way as my name, but obviously spelled differently) came over, and told us the story of an injured kookaburra that had discovered at the bottom of a telephone pole. He was essentially asking us if it were still alive tomorrow, could we take it to the vet. This isn't a pet or anything, just some bird that Gramme had found injured in his front yard.
Friday
Slept pretty well and woke up at about 8am. Sure enough, Gramme's kookaburra was in a basket on our back verandah (porch) flapping about. Looking at him in his basket, he appeared much larger than I imagined, and looked injured, but quite stoic. We tried to find the vet, but failed on our first attempt.
I posted the nine rolls of undeveloped film to A&I that I had consumed over the trip. That plus the digital pictures and the two rolls I already had developed whilst in Canberra will hopefully document my trip visually.
I took my grandma in to the "physio" (not really even sure what that is - I gather it is an Australian word for something rather pedestrian; Australians tend to abbreviate things; avo for afternoon for example). My grandma gave me detailed directions on where to park the car for when I went to pick her up because apparently "try to find a shady spot" is too complicated for me to be able to handle on my own. While I was ordering a milkshake on my way out of the Wyoming shops after dropping her off, she caught up to me and said: "I forgot to tell you how to get out." That is right, she felt that I needed directions on how to get out of the parking lot; I kid you not. I somewhat impatiently told her that I could figure it out of myself; but she told me anyway.
When we got home grandma tried to troubleshoot the malfunctioning VCR/DVD combo device by recording a bit of Entertainment Tonight. I never watch the show, since it is the lowest form of rubbish ever (pity they decided to import it into Australia), but I thought this was interesting: They were interviewing a warden at a prison where Michael Jackson might go if convicted. They used a computer simulation to show what Jackson might look like, if he hadn't used plastic surgery and makeup to make himself look like a white woman. They then had the warden stating that it was against prison policy to for inmates to use makeup, or any identity obscuring technology as they are deemed to be aids in escape. My comment is this: if you take Michael Jackson and make him look "normal" then who is going to recognize him? Just imagine a new announcer... "Sex offender and pop star Michael Jackson has escaped from downstate penitentiary he is disguised as a black man."
We found the vet in the phonebook and they had odd hours (8-12am 5-7pm) so we delivered Gramme's kookaburra into good hands at about 6pm. It's wonderful that Gramme has empathy for our feathered friends and all, but I wish he would do his own dirty work.
I took my grandma out to the Elanora for dinner. I had a stake sandwich the works again, and a lemon squash. I am so going to miss the food here. This was basically bar food and it so outclasses anything that I can get in Fishkill or Beacon in terms of ingredient quality. They had a meat lottery, in which you buy raffle tickets and they draw numbers and if you win... you get to pick a packet of meat from the meat tray. It was so quaint as to be entertaining. One guy there with a big nose and a blue shirt was totally wasted. It's funny how just about everything is funny when you are drunk.
My grandma - tough as nails - told me that she would miss me when I went home. It was an odd moment; I almost thought she had said it by mistake. I guess we sort of bonded over the past few days in a way that we don't normally.
Saturday (26 February 2005)
I woke up early. I am sure this assuaged grandma's nervousness, because she seemed to think that an hour and a half wasn't long enough to get ready. Grandma told me that she would miss me again. This time I wasn't quite so weirded out by it, and was able to say "I will miss you too" in reply.
Kings and Queens airport shuttle took me down to Kingsford Smith International. Sure enough the driver remembered my name. Australians tend to do this. I think it adds to the illusion that Australians are friendly.
I got to the airport and there was a line a mile long at the United counter. I asked someone in an official looking uniform if this was for the Los Angles, and sure enough. "Are you on the two o'clock or four o'clock?" he asked. I wasn't actually for certain. You would have thought that Kinds and Queens wouldn't have scheduled for me to arrive an extra two hours earlier though and so I guessed I was on the two o'clock.
I waved my two passports at just about every uniform between there and the airplane door. "You're passport please?" they would ask, to which I would reply: "Which one do you want?" I noticed that my Aussie passport expires January next. I had better do something about getting a new one.
The first movie on the plane was Catwoman which I am sure I know everything worth knowing about now even though I wasn't listening to the sound. Catwoman starts out as normal human being. Somebody tries to kill her, and in the process something funny happens to her and she get superhuman abilities. Catwoman then fights evil bad woman who falls to her death in the very end. Roll credits.
Apparently we diverted from our usual course to avoid the typhoon. If memory serves, a Typhoon is more or less the same phenomenon as an Atlantic hurricane, except it is what they call them in the Pacific. I think they may be called cyclones in the Indian Ocean.
Second movie: football players (called footy players in Australia, although this was an American film). Mostly ignored; I think the red team won in the end, but who cares? Watched the third movie Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, this time with sound. Bad concept, poorly executed. Although I did like the line "Just once, can't we die without arguing?" It reminded me of Ronin... I guess because we argued constantly. Fourth movie was The Final Cut which was actually pretty decent science fiction. I'm actually not sorry that I listened to it.
I opened my window at one point, expecting only the inky darkness of night, but was pleasantly surprised by the lights of Honolulu off our left side. What is that port? Starboard?
Fifth movie Alfie was a downer.
Post Script
On entering the United States six hours before I left Australia, the immigration official said "welcome back" which was nice, but two people were overtly rude to me in the AA terminal. I purchased a copy of The Economist at the newsagent and said "Thank you very much" and the woman said "Yeah, ok" and looked at me scornfully. Then some lady wheeling a wheelchair yelled at me for being in the way. It didn't help that I was super tired from getting almost no sleep. Both events happened in such quick succession that I wondered if I had a sign on my back which said "steals candy from babies" or something. I miss my other fellow countrymen who are friendly and remember my name when I meet them.
Australia was great. I now remember why it was that it has been so long since I've visited though. Because I have family in Australia, and I can minimize expenses on the fact that I get free room and board, I usually have to do what other people want. My dad has two young children, so his life pretty much revolves around that. My godmum in Adelaide has one principal hobby in life and that is eating and drinking; so we did a lot of that. My grandma is not very mobile anymore and she is sort of bossy so it is hard to make plans around the schedule she tends to impose on others. None of these are really problems, I had a great time everywhere that I was, but I didn't really get to do a lot of the things that I really wanted to do because I was always super busy doing other things. I think that if I want to do the things that I want to do in Australia I will either have to move there permanently, or not tell anyone that I am going.
Tuesday (22 February 2005)
I walked down to Wyoming to get some post cards and a milkshake. I also snagged an envelope from the post office so that I could post my film to A&I on Friday before leaving. I had a pretty good lunch with my grandma at the Gosford hotel in town. It was typically Australian.
We then drove down to Collaroy and I went swimming. The surf was a little rougher than what I really wanted. Terrigal is much more protected and so calmer. I guess I am more used to that. If you surf, Collaroy would probably be better though. Had dinner with grandma and my Aunty Rae; we were staying with Aunty Rae in Collaroy.
Then I took a walk up to Long Reef point and down to the ocean from there. There is a nice view from the top, but it is even nicer when you walk down to where the surf meets the sand. I was there at about sunset, and the nearly full moon was rising steadily. It reflected nicely off the surf and was generally quite lovely.
Wednesday
I got up at 6am to climb up and down the side of Long Reef point again, so that I could watch and photograph the sunrise. The clouds mostly obscured it, although it did peak its head out briefly to make a stunning entrance. Mostly I made long exposures of the surf crashing on the rocks, hopefully smoothing out on the slide and giving the effect of movement. On the way back I saw a spider web big enough to catch an entire jogger, and I am sure that it wasn't long before it caught one, because there were quite a few rushing by me as I returned.
Caught bus L90 into the city which took me all the way to Central station. From there I walked around town for a while. I made it to the Queen Victoria Building (the "QVB" as the locals call it) where I had a milkshake. The QVB is this huge mall in the center of the city with impressive gothic architecture.
Milkshakes are slightly different in Australia. They have more milk, and air, and less ice cream. They are light and frothy. They are delicious, but unfortunately disappear far too quickly. What you call a milkshake in the US is called a thikshake in Australia. This is probably the reason why Australia is better than America. You can get both types of milkshakes.
Then I walked over to Hyde Park. I decided the trees crating an archway was pretty, but too cliché to photograph (and besides I already had on a previous trip). I walked through the Domain, which is a park. There were a few people playing soccer in the way I imagine there would be a few people playing disc had I been in the states. Then I walked through the Botanical Gardens, which is always a treat. This time the flowers were not out in force, but it was still nice. The flying foxes were hanging out, as usual. Then I walked passed the opera house. I took photographs; trying to avoid the usual clichés. I used my 17mm super wide angle lens and took close-ups. Thinking about it now, I doubt any of the opera house shots will be of any interest at all. Pity.
I took the ferry from Circular Quay to Manly. It was a very pleasant ride. I listened to my iPod as I watched several sailing craft plunge directly for us, in what I was sure was a suicidal heading destined for crash. Each time, however they barely broke past our stern unscathed. I say stern, although when it is going back to Circular Quay, then it is the bow. The sea got choppy as we passed "the heads" where Sydney Cove opens up to the ocean. This is where I saw the ferry Collaroy headed for the Quay. I wonder what the name of our ferry was.
Australians are pretty good about naming vehicles. Each of the harbour ferries are named after Sydney suburbs, and the 747s in QANTAS' fleet are all named after Australian cities. I have several times crossed the Pacific (after which my fileserver, pacific.wdlabs.com, is named btw-) in the City of Gosford. Too bad I am crossing the Pacific in a nameless United jet on this trip. As soon as I get on the Jet it will be like being in America again, whereas when I get on a QANTAS jet in LAX it is like already being in Australia.
Anyway, a number 156 bus was waiting for me and the nice Australian bus driver answered my dumb question "do you go to Collaroy?" very nicely and I had a little joke that the green money in my wallet wouldn't be of any use to me in this transaction. The silly bill was made out of paper rather than plastic!
I noticed an advertisement in the bus for a travel agency which advocated lying to your male boss by to get time off for vacation by making vague inferences to PMS. It also said that your mileage may vary, especially if you are not female. I think in the states that would be considered politically incorrect (I personally will not even touch it; I am just documenting that I saw it). I also think it is "un-American" (possibly a communist plot) in that it publicly encourages abusing the system to get more time off. As though Australians with their five weeks of vacation really need more time off!
When I got back to Auntie Rae's house I was hot and sweaty so I went strait for the beach. The surf was considerably calmer today, for which I was thankful. After dinner I went back up Long Reef Point (again!) and back down to the ocean where I waited for sunset, and watched the moon rise. It was a full moon and this time I was fully equipped with both cameras and my tripod. I took many photographs was still not able to expend all of my film somehow.
As I was walking back to Auntie Rae's house in the dark, I started thinking about the jogger sized spider webs that I had seen there in the morning, and it started weirding me out a bit. The last thing I need is to be bitten by some poisonous Australian spider. We have nine of the ten most deadly venomous animals in existence right here in the country and continent of Australia. We also have non-venomous animals which will also kill you, like great white sharks.
I showed my portfolio to grandma and Aunty Rae. I kept expecting somebody to turn off the TV, so I didn't start showing my pictures right away. Then I realized that they somehow thought that it was appropriate to look at anyone's portfolio - let alone mine - with the distraction of the TV. Ordinarily I would consider it quite rude, but they are family, and they deserve a certain degree of respect due to their wealth of experience. It is also possible that my perspective is skewed because I haven't really watched TV of my own volition in several months, and then only once or twice in the last year and a half.
Thursday
I went back into Sydney first thing in the morning on the bus. This time I went to the powerhouse museum where I was immediately accosted, I mean greeted by one of the many retired volunteers who work at the museum. This seems to be a fairly common phenomenon in Australia. I noticed it in Canberra when we went to Old Parliament House and the High Court. He showed me around a little bit and had little stories on the various different areas of the museum... except the one on computers. He sort of waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the computer exhibit and said in curt detail the computers are down there.
Then he took me over to the Boulton and Watt steam engine where he started talking to the curator, since the other volunteer who usually waxes poetic about the engine was apparently running late. The volunteer who originally greeted me took off and left the curator of the museum to explain to me what the deal was with the steam engine. Apparently it is the only one left of its type left in existence, and it still runs on days in which they have someone to run it. It was actually fairly interesting, but what amused me was that I had the curator of the museum explaining to me what this exhibit was all about.
After that I was finally able to meander about the museum on my own and I found the computer exhibit. Someone had told me about an interactive art/technology exhibit at the museum and I wanted to check it out. I found that, along with some archaic computer equipment... a TRS 80 (also known as the Trash 80) and a PET personal computer. I would have liked to have seen an ATARI or a PDP11 to round out the collection, but I took documenting photographs anyway.
After that I had lunch at Darling Harbour (note: spelled correctly in Australia), which was a beef kebab and a milkshake. I slowly made my way back to Circular Quay and had another milkshake there. Took the ferry (this time riding on the Collaroy) once again to Manly where I once again took the bus back to Collaroy.
I drove back to Gosford shortly after, and we had "chook" (chicken) for dinner. Gramme (pronounced the same way as my name, but obviously spelled differently) came over, and told us the story of an injured kookaburra that had discovered at the bottom of a telephone pole. He was essentially asking us if it were still alive tomorrow, could we take it to the vet. This isn't a pet or anything, just some bird that Gramme had found injured in his front yard.
Friday
Slept pretty well and woke up at about 8am. Sure enough, Gramme's kookaburra was in a basket on our back verandah (porch) flapping about. Looking at him in his basket, he appeared much larger than I imagined, and looked injured, but quite stoic. We tried to find the vet, but failed on our first attempt.
I posted the nine rolls of undeveloped film to A&I that I had consumed over the trip. That plus the digital pictures and the two rolls I already had developed whilst in Canberra will hopefully document my trip visually.
I took my grandma in to the "physio" (not really even sure what that is - I gather it is an Australian word for something rather pedestrian; Australians tend to abbreviate things; avo for afternoon for example). My grandma gave me detailed directions on where to park the car for when I went to pick her up because apparently "try to find a shady spot" is too complicated for me to be able to handle on my own. While I was ordering a milkshake on my way out of the Wyoming shops after dropping her off, she caught up to me and said: "I forgot to tell you how to get out." That is right, she felt that I needed directions on how to get out of the parking lot; I kid you not. I somewhat impatiently told her that I could figure it out of myself; but she told me anyway.
When we got home grandma tried to troubleshoot the malfunctioning VCR/DVD combo device by recording a bit of Entertainment Tonight. I never watch the show, since it is the lowest form of rubbish ever (pity they decided to import it into Australia), but I thought this was interesting: They were interviewing a warden at a prison where Michael Jackson might go if convicted. They used a computer simulation to show what Jackson might look like, if he hadn't used plastic surgery and makeup to make himself look like a white woman. They then had the warden stating that it was against prison policy to for inmates to use makeup, or any identity obscuring technology as they are deemed to be aids in escape. My comment is this: if you take Michael Jackson and make him look "normal" then who is going to recognize him? Just imagine a new announcer... "Sex offender and pop star Michael Jackson has escaped from downstate penitentiary he is disguised as a black man."
We found the vet in the phonebook and they had odd hours (8-12am 5-7pm) so we delivered Gramme's kookaburra into good hands at about 6pm. It's wonderful that Gramme has empathy for our feathered friends and all, but I wish he would do his own dirty work.
I took my grandma out to the Elanora for dinner. I had a stake sandwich the works again, and a lemon squash. I am so going to miss the food here. This was basically bar food and it so outclasses anything that I can get in Fishkill or Beacon in terms of ingredient quality. They had a meat lottery, in which you buy raffle tickets and they draw numbers and if you win... you get to pick a packet of meat from the meat tray. It was so quaint as to be entertaining. One guy there with a big nose and a blue shirt was totally wasted. It's funny how just about everything is funny when you are drunk.
My grandma - tough as nails - told me that she would miss me when I went home. It was an odd moment; I almost thought she had said it by mistake. I guess we sort of bonded over the past few days in a way that we don't normally.
Saturday (26 February 2005)
I woke up early. I am sure this assuaged grandma's nervousness, because she seemed to think that an hour and a half wasn't long enough to get ready. Grandma told me that she would miss me again. This time I wasn't quite so weirded out by it, and was able to say "I will miss you too" in reply.
Kings and Queens airport shuttle took me down to Kingsford Smith International. Sure enough the driver remembered my name. Australians tend to do this. I think it adds to the illusion that Australians are friendly.
I got to the airport and there was a line a mile long at the United counter. I asked someone in an official looking uniform if this was for the Los Angles, and sure enough. "Are you on the two o'clock or four o'clock?" he asked. I wasn't actually for certain. You would have thought that Kinds and Queens wouldn't have scheduled for me to arrive an extra two hours earlier though and so I guessed I was on the two o'clock.
I waved my two passports at just about every uniform between there and the airplane door. "You're passport please?" they would ask, to which I would reply: "Which one do you want?" I noticed that my Aussie passport expires January next. I had better do something about getting a new one.
The first movie on the plane was Catwoman which I am sure I know everything worth knowing about now even though I wasn't listening to the sound. Catwoman starts out as normal human being. Somebody tries to kill her, and in the process something funny happens to her and she get superhuman abilities. Catwoman then fights evil bad woman who falls to her death in the very end. Roll credits.
Apparently we diverted from our usual course to avoid the typhoon. If memory serves, a Typhoon is more or less the same phenomenon as an Atlantic hurricane, except it is what they call them in the Pacific. I think they may be called cyclones in the Indian Ocean.
Second movie: football players (called footy players in Australia, although this was an American film). Mostly ignored; I think the red team won in the end, but who cares? Watched the third movie Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, this time with sound. Bad concept, poorly executed. Although I did like the line "Just once, can't we die without arguing?" It reminded me of Ronin... I guess because we argued constantly. Fourth movie was The Final Cut which was actually pretty decent science fiction. I'm actually not sorry that I listened to it.
I opened my window at one point, expecting only the inky darkness of night, but was pleasantly surprised by the lights of Honolulu off our left side. What is that port? Starboard?
Fifth movie Alfie was a downer.
Post Script
On entering the United States six hours before I left Australia, the immigration official said "welcome back" which was nice, but two people were overtly rude to me in the AA terminal. I purchased a copy of The Economist at the newsagent and said "Thank you very much" and the woman said "Yeah, ok" and looked at me scornfully. Then some lady wheeling a wheelchair yelled at me for being in the way. It didn't help that I was super tired from getting almost no sleep. Both events happened in such quick succession that I wondered if I had a sign on my back which said "steals candy from babies" or something. I miss my other fellow countrymen who are friendly and remember my name when I meet them.
Australia was great. I now remember why it was that it has been so long since I've visited though. Because I have family in Australia, and I can minimize expenses on the fact that I get free room and board, I usually have to do what other people want. My dad has two young children, so his life pretty much revolves around that. My godmum in Adelaide has one principal hobby in life and that is eating and drinking; so we did a lot of that. My grandma is not very mobile anymore and she is sort of bossy so it is hard to make plans around the schedule she tends to impose on others. None of these are really problems, I had a great time everywhere that I was, but I didn't really get to do a lot of the things that I really wanted to do because I was always super busy doing other things. I think that if I want to do the things that I want to do in Australia I will either have to move there permanently, or not tell anyone that I am going.
