Hail to the Queen

Today we celebrate the Queens Birthday in Australia. It’s not actually the Queen’s birthday – in fact it is a Monday holiday so it isn’t even on the same date every year. Kind of like what the Americans did with Lincoln and Washington birthdays by combining them into one day.

Today is also Linda’s birthday, and I think it is very nice of her to allow the Queen to share the same day for celebrations.

This was a weekend when we often went overseas on company business, so many of LK’s birthdays have been especially memorable.

I think the highlight was in 2000 when we were in Beijing at the company’s Asia Pacific Managers Meeting. Shirley was at that meeting, and I remember well sitting in our hotel room with her, Micaela from Hong Kong and our good friend David as we emptied, first, our minibar and then proceeded to make the others go back to their rooms and empty their minibars as well.

In fact it became such a routine practice to celebrate LK’s birthday via the minibar that when the meeting was in Sydney a few years ago, David’s birthday gift to her was a plastic bag full of the bottles from his hotel minibar.

Today we are in Hobart. When I booked the long weekend, it had seemed like a nice idea to do something for LK’s big day. But of course I forgot that Tasmania is colder than Sydney so yesterday we left gorgeous, sunny Sydney and arrived in colder Hobart. (Mind you, to the northerners reading this, “colder” meant that the temperature was in the mid-50s when we arrived. I fear I am becoming incredibly wussy about cold temperatures.)

But this is the city we are going to move within the next year or two, and we need to know all of its various aspects. So it’s a good chance to wander around and learn more of its secrets.
And, as the picture from our hotel room shows, the weather’s not really that bad. The duck’s have already been for a swim and are just sitting on the wall checking out the scenery.