The Fear

Posted on 9 June 2013 by boryssnorc

So with my back as cactus as it is, I was
indescribably apprehensive about taking this long haul flight to
LAX. We are 10hrs in and 2hrs to go and so far… I’m not doing too
bad. I have a sneaking suspicion that this is more to do with my
extremely low expectations and many years of learning how to
minimize back pain than actual comfort levels, but I’ll take it
either way. I also have a feeling that going for a massage and
getting all loosey goosey’d up before hitting the flight has helped
considerably too… all week I’ve been tense as they come thanks to
the Latin final from hell, so yay for Emma from Massage Philosophy
at Carindale for doing a good job of loosening up all those Latin
tension knots! We’ve also had plenty of turbulence – bonus! I know
most people wouldn’t look at it that way, but being jiggled about
this much is actually better than being completely sedentary for
the entire duration and the same joints and body points copping all
the pressure for the entire duration… it’s a bit like sleeping on
a boat or a train – almost doesn’t matter how crap your mattress
is, you’re kinda being rocked all night. It would have been nice to
get a few hours sleep, but even I know that was completely
unrealistic and hideously optimistic thinking. Even with a few
G&Ts, a coupla vinos, two or six Digesic and a pair of Valium,
there was never going to be any sleeping for this little black
duck… but I did give it the old college try. I’m loving the
Qantas inflight entertainment… more movies than you can poke a
stick at, and I set myself up a couple of playlists to keep me
occupied, and to drown out the aircraft noise. And while we are at
it… GOD BLESS SENHEISER and their noise cancelling ear bud
goodness! Can’t hear a damn thing while I’ve got these things in,
other than the music/movie of course which hopefully means the
whole ears ringing at the other end will be significantly reduce.
(Thanks too, Mr K for dropping me your adaptor thingy at the last
minute, awesome sauce 🙂 All things considered, this whole long
haul flight thing hasn’t been as awful as I anticipated and I feel
a lot of the anxiety surrounding it was heavily based on
experiences in the past when I was less adept at managing being in
pain – practice makes perfect and all that. Well, it’s 04:30 in LA
at the moment, so that means the flight crew are probably going to
start serving everyone breakfast any minute. :S I guess if this
gets posted up for you all to read when I hit LAX that means that
I’ve managed to find free wi-fi or have found a purveyor of
reasonably priced prepaid US SIM cards at the airport… 😀 …
probably also means there was no unexpected tropical islands,
hatches, weird arse lotto numbers or polar bears on our descent
into Los Angeles! Sorry to disappoint Mr K 😉 Totally spoke too
soon… Arrived at LAX and stood queue number 16 to be processed by
customs. Lots of strange old ladies standing around in blue
‘hi-vis’ vests officiously attempting to look busy while pushing
people from queue to queue. Stood in queue 16 for what seemed like
ages, then got shoved into ’15, cawse there’s no peeple ovar
therya’, before being bumped to 14 which saw us watching as people
from Melbourne that landed half an hour after us were wandering out
to collect their baggage in the Promised Land on the other side of
customs, while myself and other fellow Queenslanders remained
stranded at the mercy of the self important Blue Vest Biddies.
Grrr… So that wasted over an hour. Got out of the TBIT (dunno,
some big whig the terminal is named after while the rest of the
terminals at LAX have illustrious names like Terminal 1, Terminal 4
or Terminal 6) and high tailed it down to Terminal 6 where our
Alaska Airlines flight was going to take us to Vancouver. No
problem right? Except we arrive to check in and found out that the
details Qantas gave us on our itinerary are wrong… wrong flight
number, wrong time, no seating allocation and here’s the awesome
sauce bit – the flight is overbooked and even though we booked and
paid for our flights LAST DECEMBER for some reason we rock up to
the service desk and get told that they are currently looking for
volunteers to take a later flight. O_o We were there for nearly an
hour as the Alaskan Airlines ground staff were calling people over
the PA by name to check their passports, calling people over to
allocate them seats, putting a call over to ask if anyone wanted an
exit row sit (no stampede over that one… felt like I’d slipped
into an alternate universe where no one cared about leg room all of
a sudden?1?) Got called up to the service desk so they could check
our passports, again? And then got called to see them again this
time to give us a goddamn seat allocation! Thank fuck for that. And
thanks to the lack of takers on the earlier exit row offer… we
got asked if we were willing/able to sit in the exit row. So okay,
swiftly decide NOT to mention my chronic physical incapacities and
utter uselessness in the case of an emergency and say, ‘Yes please,
don’t care, just put us on the damn plane.’ *smiles sweetly* …
while thinking to self: I’m alarmed at the complete administrative
clusterfuck I had been watching for the previous hour that totally
looked ‘situation normal’ at Alaskan Airlines. Offered up a silent
prayer to the Universe that their mechanical and fleet maintenance
people are where the company is investing it’s resources… only to
be bitch-slapped by the ‘Verse in the form of a really, really
crappy old plane with broken air con vents stuffed with tissue
paper, strip lighting on the floor with wires hanging out and seats
with the padding visible through cracks in the leather. It’s okay,
it’s okay, must not be paranoid, I’m sure she’s mechanically sound.
And then we taxied out with a mysterious ka-dounk, ka-dounk,
ka-dounk noise coming from somewhere behind and beneath me… No
one else seems concerned though, so that’s something. Right? PS: If
we don’t make it, and someone finds this iPad… can you make sure
CJ gets all my good jewellery (someone has to teach that girl about
the finer things in life 😉 ) and don’t let Mr K sell my guns for
what I told him I paid for them! ‘kthanxbye.

Gelibolu Zoo

Posted on 25 April 2013 by boryssnorc

Nearly every year I find myself writing about ANZAC Day. It’s such a sad and important day for me personally, as well as being a very solemn day for all Australians, New Zealanders and, as I discovered in 2007, equally evocative for the people of Turkey. We don’t tend to think about it much, but the Turkish feel the futility and the senselessness of the military action that occurred on the 25th April 1915 at the Gelibolu Peninsula just as much as we do.

Gallipoli has become a must see/bucket list destination for many Australian’s venturing aboard these days – especially for dawn services on ANZAC Day every year. But from four separate friends, who have made the pilgrimage to the dawn services at Anzac Cove on the peninsula on various different years, they’ve all universally reported that on ANZAC Day each year, this place that is so sacred in the hearts, minds and memories all Australians, New Zealanders and Turks, becomes an absolute zoo.

Many people camp out for the entire night before to secure a good view, to enjoy the company of friends, an to experience the night so they can see in the dawn. Many bring blankets, sleeping bags, tarps and raincoats if the weather is inclement, food and drinks and with all that comes lots and lots of rubbish! And many of these people who’ve come to visit this culturally important site of multinational heritage leave all their crap behind when they leave. These people who have travelled 15,000kms around the world, congregated together to remember the fallen, to experience the collective outpouring of emotions from family and descendants of those who served and continue to serve… turn up, act like they’re at a picnic all night, become grave and solemn during the dawn services only to turn into complete pigs and leave a huge mess behind them when they leave.

Having been to Gallipoli twice, my advice is skip the ANZAC Day zoo. Go on any regular old day when there are no services, no memorials, no crowds, no officials, no speeches, no services. Go on an ordinary old day with a small group of friends or fellow travellers, minimal big tourist buses, and find some quiet and solitude to contemplate the gravitas of this special place, and allow the enormous emotional weight of Gallipoli wash over you without the hoards.

If possible, go with a Turkish guide to get an entirely different perspective of the history that you think you’ve always known about ANZAC Day. If possible, get away from your group for a while and find somewhere quiet to spend ten minutes sitting near one of the memorials, or under an oak tree, or in the actual trenches where young men from both sides fought and died… and think on their sacrifices, and the hardships they endured, and they pain they both suffered, and caused, in the name of their countries.

Aunty Mary’s Pet Rock.

Posted on 18 March 2013 by boryssnorc

My mother is one of the most wonderful, generous, thoughtful, genuine, sincere and self sacrificing women whom you could ever have the good fortune to encounter. She has always been the giver, the caretaker, the fixer, the taker of the broken eggs! She has so many incredible strengths, amazing facets and inexplicable quirks to her character that I would not know what to do without her, and I love her more than I can put into words. In addition to being all these things and so many more, she is also mad as pants!

And we have known this for some time, because Aunty Mary (as we have all affectionately have been forced to refer to her as, to stop our childhood friends from continuing to call her Mrs X after years of fruitless entreaties to call her by her Christian name), is about as eccentric as a hatful of eels at a high tea party. Every now and again, she brings us fresh evidence to support, and dare I say increase even, her Mad as Pants Status and this one I felt, I just had to share. 🙂

My Mum likes to travel. And I don’t mean she hops on planes to hotel it around Europe, even though she does this. And I don’t mean she jumps on cruise ships to sail around the Indian Ocean for weeks on end, even though she does this too. What I mean is she likes to TRAVEL. From climbing the Himalayan foothills, to white water rafting down the Zambezi; from kissing the Blarney Stone to tramping in Milford Sound; from checking out the Lincoln Memorial and Times Square, to the visiting the Singapore Zoo… my Mum is up for going nearly anywhere at anytime in her never ending quest to see and experience new things.

But one of her regular and favourite travel tricks has always been to pack up her trusty 4WD and hit the road. Now if you lived in London or somewhere that like that, hitting the road might not seem such a big deal… you can drive from one end of the UK to the other in a day if you’re keen and have enough coffee. But in Australia, ‘hitting the road’ has entirely different meaning. It involves long range fuel tanks, solar panels on your roof racks, a finely tuned list of camping gear, 12v refrigerators, dirt roads that aren’t on maps, national parks literally in the middle of nowhere and long stretches without mobile phone reception. And my Mum does this with gusto when the mood or an occasion takes her. With a cheery “I’ll be back some time in August,” we wave her good-bye in May and wait for the pictures of far distant places to start arriving via MMS and our 6-7pm ‘Telstra free hour’ phone calls when she’s found herself on the top of a mountain somewhere and has a rare moment of connection!

On her most recent road trip, she apparently found a small rock sitting on her car. Just a little red rock that must have been kicked up as she drove along an unsealed road, that landed on the four inch wide running board beneath the back doors of her Nissan Patrol. She first noticed the little rock at Kununarra in the Kimberly region of Western Australia some three or four thousand kilometers from home. She saw it was still there when she got to Darwin, still there when she got to Katherine, still there when she got to Roper River, Borroloola, Burketown, Julia Creek, Charters Towers, Emerald, Woorabinda, Miles, Toowoomba and eventually it was still there when she got home!

Since then. she has been all over South East Queensland – to the Tweed about five times, been to Bribie Island twice, Toowoomba a few times, Hervey Bay at least once and been running errands all over town, and her little (now, pet) rock remained. The Nissan has been dutifully sent into the mechanic a couple of times as well and yet, the innocuous little rock remained in situ. And naturally she has washed her big 4WD several times across the duration, which after nearly 20 years of travelling the country together and so many memories, falls somewhere between the space of a prized possession and an old friend, and as such gets the attention it deserves. And with each hand wash, Aunty Mary has just quietly left her little pet rock in its resting place on the back running board…

But last week, oh noes! Her little pet rock was just gone. We know not where. Perhaps it was the victim of a vicious shopping centre speed bump? Or maybe all this recent rain somehow unceremoniously washed it away? Who knows? It was just a little rock from the Kimberleys after all. But my Mum noticed its absence and told us how long she had been carrying it around.

Of her more endearing weirdnesses… err qualities, is an obsession with fuel consumption and a compulsion to write down the date, place, literage, cost and odometer reading every time she fills the car up. I mean, who does that for nearly 20 years?!? Oh, no wait, she used to do it for the Old Nissan too! Make that 40 years! However on this occasion her little quirk has proved handy, as the information contained in her Big OCD Book O’Fuel Consumption and Car Maintenance has allowed us to work out that the little pet rock had been sitting on the back running board of her car for over 11,250km! Through bush tracks and highways, mountain ranges and pouring rain, the little red pet rock hung in there from July 2012 to March 2013! 😛

Alas, the little pet rock is with us no longer… well no longer on Aunty Mary’s running board, and no doubt will be oddly missed. And so, I put it to you good people of the internets, that while my Mum is the most generous and loving and usually rational of human beings, is not this behaviour indicative of being as Mad As Pants as they come? For who in their right mind keeps a pet rock on their car’s running board for over nine months and 11,000kms… and doesn’t give the damn thing a name!?!?!

Apprehensive much?

Posted on 14 March 2013 by boryssnorc

Another restless night. Waking, with yet another travel nightmare, leaving me with a ball of knots in the pit of my stomach. I don’t usually remember my dreams, so this is getting rather weird.

I was in Austria, for reasons unknown, and checking into an airport, again for reasons that were unclear to me. Mr K had gone to return a rental car, and myself and the Small Child were in the queue to check-in and go through customs, which for purposes that likewise evade me, were at one and the same checkpoint/counter.

We did that thing you do when you inch forward in a queue and desperately hope that you don’t get to the front of the line just yet. It’s counterintuitive queue behavior as the entire point of queuing for something is to get to the front and get your business stated and done… but we all find ourselves doing it from time to time. Like when you’ve got all your groceries on the counter and find yourself wishing the check out chick would slow down a bit, because your partner hasn’t come back from their mad dash to grab the muesli that you forgot to pick up. Or you’re lining up for entrance to a movie and one of your party decides to dash off to the bathroom because you’ve got plenty of time, but now you’re standing there with all the tickets and said person with the weak bladder is no where to be seen. Counterintuitive queue behavior. We’ve all done it, and it leaves you with a slightly agitated, slightly worried, slightly annoyed feeling as you inch inexorably towards the front of the queue for your turn, but you’re not actually ready to be there yet.

Well, we were in the queue and Mr K was no where to be seen. The place felt a bit like the equipment hire/canteen building at Smiggins Holes down near Threadbo… busy and bustling with people all dressed for an alpine environment, in what is supposed to look like a giant log cabin but actually feels more like a giant tin shed with filthy floors and harried faces trying to be a giant log cabin. Maybe it was supposed to be a rural airport in Austria? I don’t know. But we are waiting for Mr K. I’m doing that swivel head thing that you do, when you’re desperately looking for someone in a crowd. Travel documents for all us in hand, and I can’t see him anywhere. I grab my phone and try to call him… another weird modern phenomena, calling someone you know to be across the room somewhere, or in another part of the same shopping centre. I’m desperately trying to figure out how to dial out of Austria to dial the Australian mobile phone he is carrying, as we inch further forward in the queue. We are next, and no Mr K. His phone rings, but he doesn’t answer it. But somehow the facetime function turns on, and I can see him sitting outside in the sunshine with the snowy mountains in the background having a cup of coffee, reading a newspaper and a waitress bringing him breakfast!

I’m staring at the phone with incredulity realizing he’s not going to make the flight, we’ve got 8 minutes before check-in closes (yes exactly 8, I don’t know why), so I can’t go find him or we’ll all miss the flight! I’m torn between sending the Small Child to go hunt for him, knowing that if I get to the front of the queue without either of them I’ll end up going through customs and the Small Child might not find him and then I’d be through to no man’s land with no Mr K, and no Small Child – leaving Mr K enjoying his breakfast and the Small Child stuck in an airport! Answer your fucking phone!

Eventually, myself and the Small Child go through the check-in/customs and Mr K is still no where to be seen. We end up on the flight and no doubt, Mr K was enjoying his breakfast as we were flying off to… actually I have no idea where we were going. And that’s where I woke up. Me and kidlet on the plane headed to… question mark?!? And Mr K was relaxing over breakfast somewhere without us, while I had firm possession of his travel documents and there was no way in hell that he was going to find us. :S

Hmmm, travel nightmares. Tripit says we depart in 86 days, so that is potentially 86 more opportunities for my anxieties about long haul travel to bubble to the surface in my subconscious! Yay!

Canadia… we’re not yet standing in it!

Posted on 25 February 2013 by boryssnorc

Going on a summer holiday… this is here so I don’t get lost!

View Larger Map