New Zealand

Monday - Wellington
Wellington is a small easily walkable city with a lovely old Harrods-like department store (much, much smaller though) called Kirkcaldie & Stains (see above). The city has a cable car which runs right up the hill to the University (see view below) and the Botanic Garden which has a rose garden and the most magnificent begonias I have ever seen.
Big begonias:




Tuesday - Dinners
We are having super dinners every night; I have eaten more oysters in the past four days than I have in my entire life. Last night we had dinner with a former Prime Minister of NZ -a charming chap who loves Obama.

Wednesday #1 - Auckland
A brief lunch stop here between Wellington and Samoa. Our friends have a lovely old house with a terrific view of the Auckland Tower and it’s nice to see this part of Auckland again and to catch up with F&L once again.

King Solomon's Mine

There's gold in them hills. Unfortunately, no free samples. Below, we climbed to the top of these vats where they separate the gold.

More on the Solomons

The Solomon Islands are made up of 992 islands; about 300 or so are populated. The country became independent in 1978 but there have been bouts of unrest up until a couple of years ago so Australia maintains a large peace-keeping force to keep things quiet. Our troupe includes a Brit who is the manager of the Sydney office, a young Kiwi on a fixed-term Bank contract, an Aussie Executive Director, and a new External Relations officer from the Sydney office who happens to be an Aboriginal. The latter is particularly interesting since he was a well-known Australian TV and CNN newscaster and is recognized even here in the Solomons. We are escorted by a young Solomon Islander woman with a quasi-Bank connection -an office will be opening here in May. By the way, it was thought that King Solomon’s Mine was located here (hence the name). We did visit a gold mine so who knows.
PS- Looks nicer than it actually is.

Solomon Islands

Good bye, Australia...hello (or hallo as they say in Pidgin), Solomon Islands. We were met at the airport in Honiara, Guadacanal, Solomon Islands with orchid and frangipani leis -a really nice touch for such a poor country. It took us about 3 hours to fly from Brisbane -this is one of the places Martin and Osa Johnson lived and filmed about 90 years ago so I can’t imagine how long it took them to get here or what it was like (not much has changed judging by what I have seen so far). The hotel, probably the best, is pretty dismal (just read some traveller reviews about it and it's a good thing I didn't read them before I came). Luckily, we’re only here for 48 hours.

View from the Mendana Hotel.
Required reading: "From Kansas to Cannibals: The Story of Osa Johnson"

Mission Accomplished

My friends Helen and Doug live on the outskirts of Canberra. Above is a view from their garden. I had lunch with them serenaded by a kookaburra but just had to look for the kangaroos who live in the pasture behind their house. Below, my mission was accomplished when I found five of them snoozing under a shady tree.

Views from the Outback

Where's the 7-11?

The closest destinations from Uluru are not close and some roads just end.

Fly-Netted People

Road Signs

Sunrise & Sunset at Uluru

Tie Me Kangaroo Down

Friday
Where did Valentine’s Day go? On February 13 we boarded the United flight to LA at about 6pm after a one hour delay for the 5+ hour flight. Then after a short wait in LA and a14+ hour flight we arrived in Sydney on Friday morning, February 15. Since we crossed over the International Dateline we totally missed Valentine’s Day. Not to worry. My Valentine came prepared; no wonder I keep him.

I love Sydney. What’s not to love? Mild summer (now), mild winter (last time I was here), beautiful buildings (old colonial and new like the Sydney Opera House), shops (lots of bookstores), people on the street, the Harbor, familiar food, palm trees, and throw in a Briti-ish ambiance just to make it perfect. And as much as I love Sydney maybe the rest is best: kookaburas, koalas, kangaroos, wombats, duck-billed platypusses, and pink cockatoos.

Saturday
Today we went to Ayers Rock, three hours by air from Sydney. Ayers Rock, now called by its aboriginal name Uluru, is smack in the middle of Australia. We are now half a time zone from Sydney. Yes, we turned our clocks back 1 1/2 hours! There is nothing here but the Ayers Rock Resort and “the Rock.” The Resort actually even owns the airport. There are a number of different hotels which make up the Resort and a shopping center consisting of a few tourist shops, a cafe, and a pretty pitiful supermarket. As far as I can tell, there is no town nearby -Alice Springs, for example, is a five hour car ride away. This is the Outback.

Our dollar is weaker than ever, the exchange rate being US$1 equal to about Aus$1 but everything here costs double what it would be in the US.

Sunday
The Wildlife: I was thrilled to see the dingo sign in the airport but alas no dingoes have been spotted yet. Flies are such a nuisance here that all the other tourists are wearing “fly-nets” over their heads. The flies seem to especially like the heat and sun of the day; it’s well over 100F dry heat at its peak and just impossible to walk anywhere without the flies swarming your face. There are supposedly emus, kangaroo, and pink cockatoos here but we haven’t seen any. We did see some pretty crested pigeons and some feral camels walking around but I personally think it’s too hot for anything but the flies.

The tourists are all Australians and Japanese. The main attraction seems to be looking at Ayers Rock at sunrise and sunset. There is a path (rather steep) with a guide-rail but tourists are semi-discouraged from pursuing the climb by posted heatstroke and other danger warning signs and more ominously, warnings from the Aborigine people (the “Traditional Owners”) that they would rather tourists not climb Uluru and if you do bad luck may come your way. Not that there was any chance that I would anyway.

So we went at sunset. And again at sunrise. I thought it was lunchtime but it was only 8:15 AM. This is a long day.

Super Tuesday

At Home with the Braithwaites

I just remembered one of my favorite shows from the recent past. Series 1 & 2 are the only ones available on DVD so someday I may yet see Series 3 & 4. Since I don't know how to make an internal link, here's a condensed Wikipedia blurb:
"At Home with the Braithwaites is a British television programme about a typical dysfunctional suburban family from Leeds. It was first broadcast on January 20, 2000. The show begins when the mother of the family, Alison Braithwaite (played by Amanda Redman), unexpectedly wins 38 million pounds on the lottery on her 40th birthday, from a lottery ticket bought for her by her youngest daughter, Charlotte.
Each of the Braithwaite family — David (Peter Davison), Alison, Virginia, Sarah and Charlotte — have their own issues and flaws. At the start of the first series, David is a weak-willed philanderer, but overall a nice enough guy. Alison is frustrated in her position as a housewife and during the first season attempts to keep the money and the charity trust that she has set up for it a secret from her family, who she believes will waste it all on themselves. Virginia is a lesbian and in love with their next door neighbour, the self-absorbed manipulative Megan. Sarah has a crush on her drama teacher. Charlotte is having problems at school.
As events unfold, the story takes many convoluted turns, many related to the fortune that they have unexpectedly gained, and many related to misunderstandings.
The show ran for four series. It is unlikely that it will ever return."

Our Next President

Thought for the Day - 7

The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Thought for the Day - 6

One's real life is often the life that one does not lead.
  - Oscar Wilde

Prez Prediction

Here are my current future predictions:

Romney..McCain..Clinton..Obama..Edwards*
Romney..Clinton..Obama
Romney..Clinton
Romney

*Unless Edwards somehow miraculously wins then...
Romney..Edwards
Edwards

This post will automatically self-destruct if proven wrong.

TechnoLust

The MacBook Air is sexy. But it's:
-not the longest lasting (battery-wise)
-not the fastest
-not the biggest (memory-wise)
-not port-ly (has only 1!)
-not for me.
I'm sticking with my fat little PowerBook.

A New National Portrait

So what’s the brouhaha outside the Men’s Room at the National Portrait Gallery? Did they run out of room in the Presidential Gallery? After all, Dubya’s picture is not there yet. Nope. This temporary exhibit is getting a bigger crowd than the 42 permanent portraits in the gallery combined.

Thought for the Day - 5

If you haven't found something strange during the day, it hasn't been much of a day. - John A. Wheeler

John Wheeler (1911-?) was a physics professor at Princeton who coined the term "black hole." On his 60th birthday he was honored with a "festschrift" which, if you do not already know, is a book honoring a respected academic (a celebration publication). It contains original contributions by the academic's close colleagues, often including his or her former doctoral students and can be anything from a slim volume to a work in several volumes. Nowadays, a "festschrift" is probably just a series of long e-mails but it's still nice, don't you think? Wheeler's was entitled "Magic Without Magic." This was the only strange new thing I found out today.