A Quiet Week

December 7, 2001-Weighing In

It’s been a long time since I last wrote. There really hasn’t been a lot happening here in Lake Woebegone by-the-sea.

Thank you all who wrote regarding the military tribunals. There was no predicting your opinions. Some of you who I thought would be in favor of them weren’t & the reverse was true. I’m still disturbed & undecided. The thought of the FBI going under cover in houses of worship is unsettling, but the recent events here give me pause. The terrorist who was apprehended in India yesterday trained as a pilot in Australia & was recruited by an Imam in a Melbourne mosque. You may have read that he was at the airport ready to board a commercial airliner on 9/11. He was to hijack it & fly it into the Rialto Tower in Melbourne. The news of the Twin Towers in New York was broadcast before he boarded his flight & he got scared & left the airport.

When we got here & were enthralled with the weather, people said, “Just wait for summer.” Well, summer is here & we now know what they were talking about. The humidity is killing. We have both had feelings of tightness in our chests & have fiddled with the A/C until we could get the right blend of air, coolness, & dehumidification. Leaving the windows open isn’t an option. The skies have been overcast & the winds from the shore bring a salty mist that makes the air thick. We seem to be ok when we’re outside, but there’s something about being inside with that humidity that does us in.

We’ve been planning our New Zealand trip & bought a great guidebook. We usually use Fodor’s, but they don’t carry them here. This one is printed in Great Britain & titled DK (Dorling Kindersley) Eyewitness Travel Guide. I love the maps & color photos, but miss the pricing & rating system of Fodor’s. I was happy to see that the NZ money looks just like the Australian. The denominations are the same & the coins are identical. At least, it appeared to be that way on first glance. As it turns out, the one & two dollar coins are just reversed. New Zealand sensibly made the one-dollar coin smaller than the two dollar one. For some reason known only to the dwellers in the land of Oz, the two dollar Aussie coin in smaller than the one dollar.

News Fit To Hear

TV was never wonderful here, especially without a cable subscription. Now that they’re into the summer shows, it’s abysmal. Last night we found ourselves watching the news….again. I think we keep tuning in hoping something will change for the better. We were in our usual post dinner, TV torpor when it dawned on us that we were watching a telecast about the upcoming elections in the Solomon Islands. We happen to know where the Solomon Islands are because, that afternoon, at the travel agent, I pointed to an area east of New Zealand & said, “Look at all those islands!” We now not only know where they are, but also who is running for election. We know that the opposition is slated to win & that the incumbent is unlikely to recognize his victory should it occur. We were also fortunate enough to observe that the sitting head of state wears saris in fabulous silk fabrics & that she prefers soft colors. The challenger, unfortunately, has a real need for a new barber. His tightly curled, thick, dark hair is reminiscent of a Saturday Night Live cone head whose cone has slipped to the rear at a rakish angle.

Also in the news is the dilemma the IT industry is facing here. There’s a shortage of computer programmers in Australia & they’ve been encouraging people to enter that field. Australians aren’t taking up the slack quickly enough, so the government is farming out the work off shore & looking towards Indian IT workers. The problem is they pay the Indian workers less & are undercutting their own citizens. As part of their training, Indians are being shown Aussie movies & TV shows & undergoing crash courses in Australian culture.

David has just finished re-reading Bill Bryson’s book In A Sunburned Country & I’m starting. It’s even funnier now that we have experienced what he writes about. It raises some questions such as how did Australia end up with ten varieties of deadly snakes & New Zealand with none?

Tonight is a family service at temple. There will be a Chanukah play & the children will participate in the service. They expect a big crowd. As always, my mother’s yahrzeit (remembrance of the anniversary of her death) falls on a family night.

Wednesday night at the Thai restaurant, I asked someone to sing Advance Australia Fair. Sure enough, the tune that had sounded familiar when I first heard it was eerily similar to the old Purim song, “ Oh Once There Was a Wicked Wicked Man.” They’d never heard of that song here.

Cruelest Cut

David, who's allergic to mangoes but loves them, encouraged me to buy one for myself. . Did you know that mangoes belong to the poison oak family? We just finished lunch & I have a question to pose. How many items does it take to prepare & serve a mango? Let’s count. There’s the mango itself, the cutting board, the large knife with which to slice it initially, & the small knife to pry the sections away from the pit when it’s discovered they won’t let loose because the mango isn’t ripe. There’s the fork that’s also used to pry the fruit from the pit when the paring knife fails to be effective. This fork is able to double as an eating implement. There’s a plate on which to serve the mango to only one person. We can’t forget the rags, paper towels, & cloths needed to mop up after the fruit is served. In our case, there was also a dishtowel, a bottle of alcohol, a few cotton balls, anti-bacterial ointment, & two band-aids involved. The alcohol was to pour over my hand after I pierced it with the larger of the two knives. One cotton ball was used to apply pressure to staunch the bleeding. When that didn’t work, a dishtowel was grabbed & wadded up to add more pressure. For some reason, the sensation of the knife piercing my flesh & stopping at bone was a tad nauseating for me. I got woozy and, always the drama queen, ended up lying down in the bedroom. Since the apartment is so tiny, it was easy to direct David to the ointment while admonishing him to avoid the flayed mango that lay exposed & ready to drip its poison onto him. What was he doing looking for the ointment in the kitchen, you ask? Storage space is at a premium here. My travel case with first aid necessities is stored in a kitchen cupboard. I’m sure I’ve told you that David’s shorts & t-shirts are also there. Never daunted, David skillfully created a bandage by swathing my hand in a cotton ball/band-aid wrap that will serve me well. Fortunately, the puncture wound was on my left hand. After all the fuss & mess, it turned out to be quite small. Lunch proceeded without a hitch. The mango was not worth it. I’m told that here they put mangoes in turkey stuffing. I think I’ll stick with cranberries.

Toby