Marriage

I have been married three times. My three wives have had five other husbands. I have no idea how many wives those husbands have had, but it does make modern-day marriage look like a sort of relationship Ponzi scheme similar to the financial one masterminded by Bernie Madoff.

Obviously the people of my generation have taken "Til death do us part" as an advisory, rather than a mandate.

The Catholic Church, of course, will have none of this. Get a divorce and remarry, and you're out of the club. (Unless you have enough money and clout to buy an annulment, which is a divorce-only-we-will-call-it-by-another-name. But I don't want to get into that whole can of worms.)

As a former seminarian, I always found it curious that a man who has taken the vows in Holy Orders to become a priest can change his mind later on if it all isn't working out. Even if he gets married, it isn't a deal breaker with the church the way divorce is.

That is interesting for two reasons: 1) the guys making the rules have been much more understanding and easier on the penalties for breaking the sort of vows they have to take, and 2) the church seems to have decided somewhere along the way that breaking your vow to another person is much more serious than breaking your vow to God.

Gee, these are odd things to be thinking about. I guess it's because matrimony has been on my mind this morning. Today is the 27th anniversary of the day my true love and I tied the knot. And after more than a quarter of a century, 7/7 remains the luckiest day of my life.

By now we have been together so long that we are starting to become like one another. For example, I am developing hyper-organization habits; LK occasionally does something clumsy. (But only occasionally, dear, and I will never write about them. Promise!)

But we still laugh a lot with one another, do most everything with one another, care madly for one another and love being with one another. (Well, I love being with her. I am assuming she is cool with being with me since she hasn't run away yet.)

So I guess there's one fundamental difference to a financial Ponzi scheme and the marriage-go-round of my earlier years. With Madoff and the like, the last guys in are the ones who suffer the most. With marriage, the last one was winner-take-all. Love you, LK. Here's to many, many more great years together.

Mail

By now most of you who received last week's e-mail from me will have either correctly deduced that I did not in fact get "a iphone from my relatives" and deleted the spam message. Those of you who did seize the precious chance to shop for PC, TV, motorcycle and so on at that site are probably still awaiting delivery. You may want to check that status, and while you're online perhaps check out your credit card accounts as well.

This is the second time in eight months some spambot has been able to access my Hotmail contacts list and send similar messages for sites hoping to capture credit card details from people who haven't already donated their life savings to that unfortunate guy in Nigeria.

There is an upside. I heard from several old friends whom I haven't corresponded with lately. The downside, unfortunately, is that more than a few thought that perhaps I had actually written the e-mail after a tad too much vodka.

After this last attack, I went into my Hotmail contacts list and altered everyone's e-mail address so a spammer couldn't automate sending a message yet I would still be able to remember what the true address is. I also deleted contacts who aren't contacting me (and vice versa) anymore. That left me with only a handful of people who will be annoyed if the spambot gets by my rudimentary protection and strikes again.

I say rudimentary because I sent an e-mail to about five people last week and when I typed in their names two addresses came up - the original and the altered. I am not quite sure why those I have changed are still showing up and will try to figure out how to permanently remove them. But I am a little worried that the final solution may involve dealing with Microsoft technical support - something I have been able to avoid for years by switching to Apple Macs.

You know Apple Macs - the ones that don't get hacked!

I may have been tempted to revert to old-fashioned snail mail where you just lick some glue, put the stamp on and throw it in a metal box in the shopping mall. Then you wait to see if you can still taste that glue on your tongue when the letter arrives.

I should add that the recent record of Australia Post has not inspired me to seriously consider reverting to traditional mail. When we went to Bali, I completed the form to have them hold our mail for the week. They are supposed to deliver the held mail on the day you designate as your return.

In this case that was June 20. I am pleased to report that AusPost successfully held our mail for the week. Unfortunately more than two weeks and three phone calls later the held mail hasn't been given to us. And don't even think of going to the post office and collecting it. It is held in the distribution center and mere mortals like us are not permitted there.

There's obviously more to come with this story (although I'm not sure it's the held mail that is coming). And I am especially pleased to report that LK, fresh from her successful campaign in the Optusian Wars, has taken it upon herself to lead the fight.

Obviously something is holding up our mail. Be it rain, hale or dark of night, I don't know. But I suspect that LK might be the answer to our problem. I'll let you know.

Solstice

The day after I was born, the sun stood still.

Well, technically it did not stand still, but that is the literal definition of the word "solstice", which happened the day after I was born.  It probably makes more sense to say that the day after I was born was the longest day of the year for my parents.

Now that I live in the southern hemisphere, that is turned on its head. The day after my birthday is now the darkest day of the year.

I thought that was true when I wrote that a couple of days ago, but then I discovered that the solstice - which occurs on June 21 in the north - actually happens on June 22 in the south.  And yes, the 22nd here is the 21st there for much of the day, but I had just assumed that the sun ignored the international date line and more or less did its own thing.

Which is why I never did well in science, I suppose.

All of which is a very long lead-in to telling you about my birthday last Monday which was just about the longest day ever for me. We knew going in that it was going to be tiring. Catching a 5-hour flight at 11pm on Sunday from Bali always meant that we wouldn't get enough sleep. Having to wait around for 8 hours before catching the leg to Tassie, we could either snooze in the lounge or get home tired.

LK snoozed a bit sitting up. I didn't sleep but I am not sure I was conscious at all times as several times I seemed to suddenly snap to and focus my eyes on whatever it was I was staring at. Anyhow, no real dramas that day (unless you count the joys of flying Crapstar -  excuse me, I meant Jetstar). 

But I did learn that I am nowhere near as resilient as I used to be. The next morning I slept longer than I have in years. I dragged for that and the next couple of days. Bali Belly (the Bali version of Montezuma's Revenge, for you North Americans) waited until I was home to strike. As they say, my get-up-and-go got up and went.

And that may say more about this year's birthday than the solstice.

Coincidences

The ash cloud finally blew off, flights were restored, and we had no problem flying back to Hobart after connecting through Sydney yesterday.

Well, technically I should say the first ash cloud has blown off because this morning we read the news that all domestic flights from Sydney are being cancelled this afternoon because a new ash cloud is moving in.

Strange coincidences. We fly from Hobart and the next day they close down flights to the island. We fly from Sydney and the next day they cancel flights from Sydney.

Of course, it has nothing to do with us. No more than the fact that the northeast US airports basically shut down for days in December the day we flew out of the only one that was still open. Or British Air went on a strike the day we flew them from Europe last June.

Or the Iceland volcano stopped air traffic the day we arrived by ship in Greece last year. By the way, that was the day before Greece had a bloody national strike that stopped everything in its tracks.

Of course, bad things don't always happen promptly on the day after we leave places. Some times they take a little longer. It was literally weeks after we left Egypt and Jordan before those places ground to a halt during the Arab spring. And we had left Tunisia a couple of months before they had their national strikes.

To repeat, of course it has nothing to do with us. Just coincidences.

But if they are not -- if we are leaving some strange karmic spore behind after we visit places - then it's a bit spooky. I don't believe there is a cause-and-effect in play here, but if it is then I have a bad feeling that the effect is coming faster lately.

In our earlier days of travel, it seemed to take longer for stuff to happen once we left. Our first big-deal holiday was in Monterrat, and it took years before the volcano blew and removed that island from the list of places people visit. But it took less than a year from our visit for Christchurch to be ruined by earthquake.

Sure, we do not have any responsibility or link to any of this. But. Just in case, there's one ongoing disaster I really feel bad about. For it was only a couple of weeks after we left Alaska that John McCain named Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential candidate.

Sunset

That's a picture at the top of this post of the beautiful sunset here at Jimbaran Bay in Bali.

Well, it would be a picture of the beautiful sunset had I charged the camera before rushing down to get the shot. Instead of capturing the fat blob of sun melting into the gold and pink waters, I got a message from the camera: "No battery power remains." I even tried to argue with it that it was impossible to give me that message if there was no battery power, but the camera wasn't in any mood for that sort of debate.

I had wanted to take a shot - and will over the next day or two so you can see it - so that everyone would understand what a beautiful thing it is to watch the sun set in the Bali Sea. But even moreso, I wanted to then tell you all that the sunset here is nothing compared to what is going on in Tassie right now.

Had we been home,  this is the sunset we would be seeing there this week as we looked out our kitchen window toward the ocean - which we do quite often:

That's a photo of Sandy Bay, which is just a few miles down from us. Here's a spectacular one taken from Seven Mile Beach, which is across the bay from us.

These photos are published by our local newspaper, The Mercury, and they have lots more (and credits for the photographers) at this address.  It's worth clicking through because there are some really spectacular things going on.

It's great being here in Paradise, but what a light show to have to miss. It reminds me that two years ago Sydney had a similar spectacular light show from dust storms blowing in from the desert, and we were a day away from landing back home and had to rely on friends' photos.

In this instance, Tasmania's show is caused by the dust spewed by the Cordon Caulle volcano that went off in Chile last week. That dust has managed to go east across the Atlantic, past Africa and over the Southern Ocean to end up blanketing Tasmania and other southern parts of Australia.

And besides creating spectacular sunsets, it's also put our little island state into virtual isolation as flights have been cancelled for the past couple of days. In fact, we were very lucky to have left when we did or we wouldn't be basking in the Bali weather.

It gives you a sense of the power of vocanoes and the amount of debris they send into the air when you think that that much dust could travel that far around the world and still be so formidable that it disrupts air travel while putting on great light shows.

It's not the first time this has happened again. Check out the sky seen at sunset from Mount Wellington, which looms over Hobart. It reminded me of the sky in Edvard Munch's famous painting The Scream.

There are many experts who believe this Norwegian painter saw a sunset very much like those in Tamania as the ash from Krakatoa filled the northern skies in 1883.  (Other experts say that is far too literal and he was not depicting something he actually saw when he painted. Which, I guess, is their way of telling us to ignore him when he wrote in his diary: "I was walking along a path with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly the sky turned blood red.")

Anyhow, that brings us full circle. Many of you will recall the movie "Krakatoa, East of Java" - or at least the title. It is notorious for being astonishingly incorrect, since Krakatoa is west of Java. What is east of Java, of course, is Bali. And that's where we have been watching beautiful sunsets even if they aren't the technicolor shows going on at home.

Transit

The story you are about to read is true. No names have been changed to protect the innocent, because we never really learned anyone's name. Besides, I'm not sure any of them are innocent.

We boarded the flight to Bali in Sydney having done all the usual overseas travel stuff: completed and turned in immigration cards, had passports scanned, bought duty-free booze, then sat in the lounge drinking free booze and snacking until they announced the plane was boarding and we move there for more free booze and a snack.

The flight from Sydney to Bali goes south, even though Bali is north. That's because Qantas stopped running the route and gave it to its cheap-as-chips low-class (oops, that probably should have been low-cost) subsidiary Jetstar. Jetstar pretty much runs its schedule as if the planes were just very big and very fast buses. The Sydney stop, then the Melbourne stop, then the Bali stop, then do it all over again. And please stand clear of the driver.

In Melbourne we had to get off the plane even though it was the plane we were taking to Bali. But they had to clean it and didn't want annoying things like customers getting in the way. We were also told to take all our belongings. I am pretty sure this is because seeing a bottle of duty-free booze would probably prove too much temptation to anyone actually working for Jetstar.

As we disembarked, a typical Jetstar customer service rep stood at the end of the jetway, barking out every few minutes that people who were going on to Bali had to step aside and wait with her. She then led about 20 of us to a subterranean security point that screened transit passengers to make sure we somehow hadn't acquired weapons on the flight from Sydney.

OK, so far this isn't all that unusual. However, as we waited to put our bags on the belt to be x-rayed, a slight commotion started near the front. When I looked up, the security guard was taking a bottle of bourbon out of a passenger's duty-free shopping bag and announcing that she was confiscating it.

The booze was purchased in the international duty-free shop in Sydney and was perfectly permissible to carry on any international flight leaving from there. But by getting off the plane in Melbourne, it became just another example of liquids they won't allow through security. Good-bye to our Johnnie Walker Black and Ciroc vodka. Farewell, in fact, to all the bottles in all the bags of our travelling companions.

You need to know a few things about Aussies. They love bargains. They love travelling on holidays. And they love to combine the two by buying cheap booze for their holiday. Most of us going to Bali were watching liter after liter of booze being taken away as if we were a bad episode of Boardwalk Empire and wondering how much we could drink on the plane to make up for it.

But there's some other things you need to know about Aussies. First, they really, really, really don't like anyone taking away their booze - especially if they just bought it and the bottle is not even open yet. And oh yes, most Aussies don't give a crap if someone is wearing a uniform and acting as if they're in charge.

I understand why most Americans bow their heads slightly and put up with whatever the security screeners do to them at airports. One of America's great national fears is having our lives messed up by insecure people suddenly thrust into positions of some power -- small town cops, assistant principals, airport security people.

So Americans wait until they've cleared security before grumbling about the screeners. Deep in every one's mind is the likelihood that if you tell these minimum-wage, poorly trained, previously unemployed people that they're not doing a good job, they are likely to retaliate by pulling you aside, questioning you, frisking you, perhaps calling others to see if there is some way to make you miss your flight. So in America, when they confiscate the booze you bought inside the security zone, you just sigh and live with it.

Not quite the same here. Faced with injustice - and the loss of our holiday booze, we passengers became one voice, demanding they give us our grog, refusing to accept that there was any logic whatsoever in what they were doing, arguing that it was our right to keep it. Kind of like Arab Spring, only on a scale we were more comfortable with.

Anyhow,  a supervisor came and sorted it out. Let us know that it wasn't something he should do, but since we were all obviously good people (albeit with some of us starting to show evidence of DTs), he would let the booze through. Our Jetstar customer rep moaned that she could be fined for helping us do this but she would do it and wanted us to know what a wonderful person she was. And, by the way, could you please write to Jetstar and let them know they should tell you not to buy booze in Sydney but to wait until you get to Melbourne.

Which is a good idea, except I would expect that in a good company you wouldn't need customer complaints to adopt a good idea. It might be just enough to have an employee suggest it. Oh wait, this is Jetstar. Never mind.

Falling

So there I was, lying on the concrete and thinking several things simultaneously.

First, I was replaying in my mind just what exactly had happened to make me fall so heavily to the sidewalk. I also was taking an inventory of what hurt and what didn't and deciding that my wrist might be sprained (it wasn't) and my ribs on the right side were hurt (they're sore).

And let's be honest, I couldn't help hearing that little voice in my brain saying, "A fall is often the beginning of the end for the elderly."  Oh please, I thought, I am only going on 63, please don't let that be elderly. Please, dear Lord, just let me be middle-aged.

Then the most serious thought entered my head. How am I going to get up? Oh not because I had done any damage to my hips or shoulders. Just the general issue I would have any time I was lying flat on the ground and had to figure out how to get upright without anything to grab hold of.

Turns out it wasn't difficult at all this time. Perhaps because the concrete was so damned cold or perhaps because I noticed that the neighbors would see me sprawled out there if they looked out their windows. No matter, I was vertical wth nary a grunt.

I had been carrying large empty packs used to ship our pictures, which we are finally starting to hang. The shipping packs are large and I couldn't see the ground, and in particular hadn't seen that there was a fairly significant drop-off beside the footpath just as it turns toward the trash bins. So that's how I put the tumble into stumble.

Anyhow, not much damage done. I am quite sore in one precise spot halfway up the ribs on the right. I don't think I cracked a rib, but then again if I did there isn't much they can do for me. Of course it hurts if I laugh or cough, and strangely enough for the past couple of days LK has been very, very funny. I do not, however, believe she is doing this to hurt me.

I put off telling LK for a while, knowing what would follow. Finally, though, I figured I would have to explain why I was wincing every time I took a deep breath. I thought I would make light of it, and told her that because the packing material was padded, I had actually bounced a few times when I landed.

She shot back that I probably would have bounced even without the packing material. Which, come to think of it, is how I learned that it hurts when I laugh.

She did, of course, have a few choice thoughts about all of this. After asking at least ten times whether I really wasn't hurt badly, she then reminded me of the time my Wii exercise program had asked me if I fell a lot when I walked. I did recall that.

And then she reminded me that we had recently discussed that I don't tend to notice the sort of things that tend to trip you as you walk. I remembered that discussion. In fact, I remembered it so well that I hadn't even told her how I tripped over the curb at the shopping center the other day.

And then she played the trump card. "I know you think I nag you about being more careful and taking better care of yourself, but I worry about you and I don't want you hurt."

After only a couple of days, the pain in my side is already much better. However, I am quite sure its long-term effects are going to last well into my old age.