Preparations

March 5, 2002-Looking Back

We spent the afternoon in Cleveland today. Yes, there’s a town of that name between the Gold Coast & Brisbane. It’s nothing special, but we did find a cute restaurant overlooking the water.

We were watching the news on TV last night & they were reporting on CHOGM (Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting). All of the countries that participated sent English-speaking representatives. We were surprised to see that the delegates were all listening to translations through earpieces. We finally understood when one of the reporters interviewed one of the attendees. There were no subtitles & we could hardly understand her. A lot of these countries have an indigenous language & the English speakers are heavily accented to the point of being unintelligible. That’s probably what we’ll be faced with in India & Africa. David & I have spent many a tour translating some guide’s English to each other.

David was such a good boy & a great secret keeper. He had to go to the plastic surgeon’s office to pick up an ointment for me after surgery last week. The lab results hadn’t come back yet & the doctor reminded him that there’s a 97.3% success rate in getting out all of the cancer the first time. If not, he would have to operate again as soon as possible. . David was very worried, but spared me. He never told me of that possibility for which I’m grateful.

It’s exactly a month less a day before we leave the Gold Coast. It will be the end of making do with four plates, four forks, four knives, four spoons, four glasses, etc. It will be the end of sleeping in a bed so hard that David is in real pain every morning & I can feel my bones when I roll over. My back will no longer give me twinges no matter where I sit in the apartment. It will be the last time I’ll have to curl up with a book in bed because it’s too cold & drafty from the A/C that blows into the living area.

It will also be the end of seven months of eating outdoors whenever we go to a restaurant. We’ll no longer live in a pint-sized apartment that was minimalist yet totally adequate & supremely functional. We won’t get to walk to shopping, cafes, library, & cinemas in blazing sunlight with the mountains as a backdrop. We won’t be walking through the park to the ice-cream shop in the evening & then casually strolling home by way of the beach to pay homage to the Pacific. We will no longer be able to subtract half from the cost of living. We’ll seriously go into withdrawal when Wednesdays roll around & we won’t be meeting the Bruces for dinner at the Thai restaurant.
Neither one of us will miss being professionally involved with a congregation. Our phone rang at 8:45 this morning. It was a mother wanting to set up a meeting with David for her daughter’s bat mitzvah. Early calls have been a problem here. I’m looking forward to doing the “want to’s” of life instead of the “have to’s.”

We are very anxious to be on our way home. There has been an undercurrent of unease on my part since we left. I felt it as we left Akron in August, 2001. But after 9/11, the incredible distance created a dimension of helplessness.

But, I guess the airlines are really going to let us come home. We went to the Brisbane airport to get our Around the World open tickets changed to the dates we’ll actually be flying. We got as far as getting stickers put on our tickets from Sydney to India on Cathay Pacific & now have to see the Northwest/KLM people when we get to Sydney. We really don’t have to have the changes physically made on the tickets since we’re in the airlines’ computers, but we’ll feel better if we do. Anyway, David needs something to do while I’m climbing the bridge besides going to the casino.

March 6, 2002-Reasons To Leave

I would like to start today’s email with a sea theme. A friend from Akron who gets this email, got an article from her mother. It had some interesting information about the Great Barrier Reef. The one factoid that stood out among all the rest was that “some reef fish species change sex with age (!?!)” Those are Nancy’s punctuation marks. My response to her was,” As for the sex-changing fish, maybe what mothers tell their sons is true. It does fall off. Are the fish also blind & do they have hairy fins?”

To complement that information, there was another box jellyfish stinging in the greater Cairns area. A little girl aged 3-4 was stung & went into cardiac arrest. She seems to be ok now & is home with her family. She was a local child & was swimming in an area that was unprotected by barrier nets.

There was an article in the paper today along with an unnecessary photo. The item said that a sea snake had been seen on the beach where the delegates to CHOGM (Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting) swam. Sea snakes are extremely poisonous if not deadly. The photo showed the security guard lifting it with a stick & throwing it back into the ocean. He said it was the most dangerous thing he had to do during the meetings. I beg your pardon! What kind of security is that? If a venomous reptile gives itself up to protect the dignitaries who are swimming in its habitat, I think it would only be fitting that a security guard take the snake’s offer as an act of selfless suicide & let it go about its business of sacrifice. What could the repercussion be if this selfsame sea snake bit a CHOGM-ite? Would there be a lawsuit? Could the repatriation of the snake to the sea be seen as a terrorist act against the country whose delegate gets bitten? If the attack results in the death of the representative, could it lead to war? The security officer was placed on the beach to safeguard the CHOGM-goers. Perhaps the sea snake was placed on the beach by an unfriendly power that counted on the over-weaning eco-sentimentality of an Aussie to do just what the guard did.

Now, I’d like to take you out of the ocean & into the bordello. Once again, the newspaper has given a glimpse of the sordid side of Australia. It seems that the widow of a radiologist now runs a brothel in New South Wales. Her husband was gunned down in May of 2000 in front of their brothel. I’m in favor of legalized & regulated prostitution. I won’t go into the reasons now, but I found it disconcerting that a physician would own a brothel. I have no problem with doctors caring for the sex workers in the brothels. In fact, I see that as a positive of regulated prostitution. It just gives me the creeps that a doctor would be involved in that kind of business venture. Whatever happened to doctors owning nursing homes?

David read the weather more closely today & found out that there are more categories than “fine & mostly fine.” There’s also “mainly fine, thundery, & late change.” I like the “late change” category. It covers all contingencies for error on the part of the meteorologists.

An odd thing happened last night. I woke up at about 2AM worrying about my nose. I thought that it should look better than it did & was worried about the bump from where the flap was laid over the excision. I started to do some of the relaxation & focusing breathing that I learned when I took Tai Chi. It’s called Chi Gung (sp) & is used to circulate or to focus the chi, or energy. This time I focused on my nose. It started to tingle & throb as if it had a pulse of its own. I kept up the breathing pattern for several minutes then fell asleep. When I woke up in the morning, I wanted to see if I could do it again or if my nose tingled on its own last night. Even though I wasn’t as focused this time, I was able to re-create the sensation, although it wasn’t as strong. When David looked at my nose he noted a vast improvement.

We tried to call our kids today. Wendy was out. We spoke to Daniel, Vikki, & Alex. All is well. They sound very busy. Vikki is finally starting to feel human again now that she is 16-17 weeks along in the pregnancy.

Toby