Sunday, May 27th .....

When I book international flights, I’ve always had in mind that, after 7 hours, the seats become hard, the aisles constricting, and the joints start to complain. For this reason, I booked our flight to Osaka over two legs: Sydney to Singapore (7 hours, 25 minutes), and Singapore to Osaka (6 hours 30 minutes), with a four-hour stopover in between. I know I’m slow on the uptake but that’s a whole lot harder than a single journey of 10 and a half hours even on JAL which might have the least amount of leg room of any major airline.

I know we started off tired but by the time we got to Singapore, all I wanted was a shower and all Marilyn wanted was a sleep. The onward flight to Osaka was scheduled for 1.25am (is there such a time?) and we were told that boarding would begin at 12.15. That gave Marilyn just two hours to nap in the Nap Room at Changi Airport.

As you would expect, with even the best of airlines, there can be delays and we didn’t board until 1.15. Marilyn missed out on an extra hour in bed and at her level of exhaustion, that was significant. Good old Singapore Airlines boarded us efficiently and we arrived in Osaka 15 minutes early. It’s great to be back in Japan. We left our luggage at the hotel as we couldn’t book in until 4pm and went off to get our bearings. The underground shopping mall is all that had been promised: really nice little shops, hole-in-the wall restaurants, and access to the high-end department stores with their fantastic food departments.

There’s a kind of auditorium which we walk through on the way from the hotel to the mall. On display there are two fantastic balls made out of pieces of wood which won the Grand Prize at some exhibition in 1998. The photographs don’t show the level of detail and the complex way that the pieces have been fitted together. It’s so typical of what happens to art which wins an exhibition. For a time the artist is applauded and the pieces get the attention they deserve but, after a few years they are stuck in a corner to gather dust. A bit like people, really.

We had dinner at a tiny restaurant in a side-alley off the main avenues of the mall. The menu had pictures so we could point to what we wanted and there was white wine available, of unknown vintage. We ordered sets which are a staple of the railway station restaurants in Japan. You order the meat you would like and it comes with a salad, bowl of rice and a miso soup. We simply chose chicken and pork and they were delicious. It can be expensive to eat in Japan but our two meals with a glass of wine and a beer cost about $30. We can get breakfast at a pastry shop: ham and cheese sandwich, hard-boiled egg and a coffee for $4.50. Not bad!

The weather is good so far but rain is expected later in the week.

Friday, May 24th .....

The plan today was to catch the train to Sydney to meet up with Marilyn who has been up to Mudgee to see her Dad. Robyn had met us when we arrived to help me get all the luggage to her place so that Marilyn could travel light to Mudgee and she and her friend Pam came again with me from Oak Flats to get the luggage once again where it needed to be. We all met at Central Station, Pam and Robyn got the next train back to Oak Flats and Marilyn and I headed off to Hornsby where we were to have coffee with our friend, Tony, before staying the night with Marilyn’s niece, Sharon. We really are mad; we complicate our lives unnecessarily by trying to do too much in one trip. We know we do it but it’s almost a compulsion. I know that the basis for it is my Scottish sense of thrift: if we’re going to Sydney, let’s make the most of the money we’ve spent by seeing Mum and Uncle Archie in Wollongong, catching up with Robyn and Sandy and Janet and the boys, and getting to Mudgee to see Marilyn’s Dad and Anne and Alan, and we should try to get to Sydney to see Sharon and David and Gavin and Bridget, and all the kids, and don’t worry about the fact that we have four heavy pieces of luggage, and two heavy coats and a box with two bottles of Tasmanian wine for Sharon and Bridget and should we take flowers, chocolates and little gifts for the kids, and all of this on public transport? Yes, we are mad!

We finally got on the train to Hornsby with all the goods and chattels, and settled down for a pleasant journey ….. until Strathfield. On to the train came one of the most worrying apparitions I had ever seen – a young man of middle-eastern appearance, dressed in full jungle greens with beret, polished boots, a red, green and yellow armband with a military emblem, and a backpack in the same three colours. He stood at the door, staring out. When the train pulled out, he started to chant, softly, but I could make out a few words ‘time to remember … the …. anniversary of May 25th ….’ On and on, he chanted, repeating the same words. I don’t know what might have happened on this date years ago but we didn’t want to find out what significance it might have for this young fellow, and what had he planned for the anniversary.

Like B1 and B2, Marilyn and I had the same thought – let’s get off the train at the next station. If it’s going to blow up, we’d rather not be in the vicinity. We’ve spent too much money on this holiday for it to be wasted. I know we’re only country bumpkins from Tasmania and this might happen all the time in the big smoke, but we’re not so cynical that we think we should ignore it.

Anyway, in one piece we arrived at Hornsby on a later train. Marilyn reported the incident to the station master there and he promised to alert security.

It was great to see Tony again; it’s been almost 12 months since we were at his 50th birthday and a lot has changed in his world in that time. Sharon and David met us for dinner and they are as busy as ever and their girls are delightful. David left us after we got back to their home as he is training for a full-marathon and only has the evening hours to get to the gym but Marilyn and I were exhausted and just needed to get to bed. I hope we make it to the plane tomorrow. The past few days have been frantic and the holiday is becoming more needed.

Thursday, May 24th (Part 2) .....

When Uncle Archie worked out who I was on Wednesday, he quickly tried to pin me down to take him out for lunch. Robyn had offered me her car but I had preferred to travel by bus so I told he would have to settle for a trip to MacDonalds for coffee. I borrowed Mum’s wheelchair, bundled him in and set off. It’s probably a kilometre from the nursing home to Macca’s but the chair travels smoothly and I’m just about fit enough for the round trip without having to carry oxygen.

It was quite a pleasant trip and I know he likes a laugh even at his own expense. He always tries to chat up waitresses or girls in the lift but I just warn them he’s a cheeky bugger and he laughs. He wants me to talk about what I’m doing and it doesn’t matter how often I tell him the same stories, he appreciates them. Perhaps, he really has a goldfish memory and nothing sticks for more than a few seconds. When I mention names, he says, ‘A wee minute,’ while he tries to work out who they are, and that even applies to names like Marilyn or Jamie, or Sandy, who sees him three times a week.

I know he has stopped telling me about his life and I reckon that’s because he has lost the ability to see it as a coherent whole. He might remember snippets but doesn’t remember the context. I asked him whether he had ever been to India. Oh, yes, he said, but had no idea which city or when. In fact, I don’t think he has ever been.

Today, after the success of yesterday’s coffee outing, I had promised to take him to lunch. I asked the staff to have him ready by 11 o’clock and, when I came in at that time, I found him sitting the wheelchair, dressed for going out, but no idea what it was all about. Unhappily, he was in the home’s wheelchair which is used by all and sundry and, when I had been pushing it for a couple of hundred metres, I realized one of the tyres was somewhat flat. No matter, press on, John!

I was uncomfortable about taking him into the Wollongong Mall because I imagined he would notice his bank and ask me to take him in to get some money. Four or five years ago, I had to apply for Guardianship of his funds to stop them disappearing into the pockets of strangers and his requests for me to get money from the bank have been constant.

I knew there were a few restaurants at the bottom of the main street so we headed for that area. It was quite interesting: we had a choice of Vietnamese, Thai, Spanish, Italian, Greek and Indian without having to search around. Indian sounded good so in we went. The people who ran it were very nice but they were certainly not set up for wheelchairs – step at the door to impede progress and too little room between the tables. There weren’t many customers and we were early so adjustments were made and we gave the order. He doesn’t eat much so I ordered entrée-size garlic prawns for both of us and a serving of lamb kebabs to share. We also had a glass of NZ Sauvignon Blanc to wash it down.

As I said, we didn’t have much room so, when a party of 7 men came in and they were seated right next to us, I wondered about the spatial awareness of the waitress. All her customers crowded into one corner didn’t seem like good sense. However, the food was great and he ate all his own prawns and two of mine so he must have enjoyed them.

I was telling him about a shop in town where all the books were only $5 and he just had to see it. From the restaurant to the bookshop was up (and I emphasise UP) the main street. Pushing this elderly gentleman in a wheelchair with a flat tyre soon lost its glamour and I was panting when we arrived. I think he enjoyed looking in the shops; he was particularly drawn to shoe shops but he has enough pairs of shoes to start his own shop, so I gently dissuaded him from buying any more.

Let’s have a cup of coffee, he said, when I was just about ready to take him home. I don’t think he really likes coffee because he rarely finishes his cup, but I suspect it’s one of the social cues he learned in life and it’s now an automatic ‘filler’ he drops into conversations. OK, I’ll go along with it and we find a coffee shop. When I ask him what he would like to eat, he always refuses but I’ve got into the habit of ordering something for him anyway and he always eats it. He managed to stretch the coffee stop out long after I had finished mine. I had been watching the clouds build up so I finally put my foot down and wheeled him away, saying that we didn’t want to be caught in the rain.

Don’t worry, he said, a little rain never hurt anyone. That didn’t stop him ordering me to keep under the awnings and hurry because he was getting wet. Anyway, the rain didn’t hurt him and we got back in one piece, even if a little damp.

Mum, who had not recognized me in the morning, was no more focused in the afternoon. I sat with her for a little while but she wouldn’t let me hold her hand and seemed compelled to sing her songs. I don’t know whether the singing helps her but it’s almost as if there is a desperation to sing. I had never imagined that hearing her sing would have been so troubling.

Thursday, May 24th .....

When I come to Wollongong, the main priority is to see Mum but, more and more, Uncle Archie takes up the majority of my time. The last few times I’ve been here, Mum has not been very lucid and it’s hard to know what she understands and what she enjoys. If we take her out, we don’t know whether she is relishing the change of scene or is becoming anxious because she doesn’t recognize her surroundings and is frightened by the unusual noises. Uncle Archie is better able to say what he would like to do and is not shy about asking.

When I arrived yesterday I found the staff wheeling their residents out on to the sunny balcony. Uncle Archie was sitting in solitary splendour, soaking up the sun, so I popped along to see if Mum was up and about. Her door was closed which I took to be a sign that they were dressing her, so back to the balcony. It took Uncle Archie a while to recognize me or work out who I was. I thought it might be the sun behind me which was confusing him but later on I started to think that his memory was failing.

While I was talking to him, the staff brought Mum out with the others. She seems to spend all her time in a bed-chair at the moment and I can’t help thinking of a time five or six years ago, before she was admitted to a nursing home, when she asked me to take her to a place in Wollongong which she thought might offer her a place. The person-in-charge said that it was not the sort of place Mum would need but Mum insisted on having a look anyway (I think she had helped raise some funds for the facility so felt a connection).

Oh dear, it was tragic. All the old ladies (very few men) were in these bed-chairs, wizened and toothless. Certainly, waiting for God! Mum was shocked, I know. Even though she knew, intellectually, that growing old was not always a pleasant journey, the reality was a lot more challenging than she had imagined. She couldn’t wait to get out of the place. ‘If I get like that,’ she said, ’Just shoot me.” That might have been her macabre Scottish humour talking but there has to be an element of truth under the surface. And we’re helpless to do anything about it.

Now I see her, my strong, competent Mum, lying under a blanket, singing nonsense words to the old tunes she learned as a child, like Westering Ho, or I Know a Lassie, or sleeping with her mouth open. All her dignity has gone with her memory and there’s little left of the woman who left her family in Scotland and travelled to the ends of the earth to give her sons a better chance in life. She’s taken nothing from the earth and left negligible footprints but her reward is to fade away by degrees until she is just a shell, while her family watch the deterioration. It’s not a nice way to live, or die.

Monday, May 21st .....

I feel as if I’ve misplaced three weeks of my life.  In other words, I have a lacuna.  As you can see, I did manage to learn a new word.  Apparently, it’s derived from Latin and means a gap or cavity just like the three weeks since I wrote something for my blog.

If you think that not much has happened in the past three week (or 19 days, in fact) you are right.  Marilyn was busy with the conference right up until Saturday, May 5^th which was the day of the final session.  I had been asked to be the official photographer so I had to be there on that day as well.  There was a bit of consternation when it was noted that one of the guest speakers hadn’t turned up.  I was given the organiser’s phone and sent outside to watch for her. 

You couldn’t write a script with this dilemma but she and her driver had gone to the wrong destination, driven in through a gate and returned to find the gate had been locked behind them.  Strange but true!  I went off to see what I could do, expecting that I we might find a side gate but no such luck.  ‘If you give me a leg up,’ said the fifty-ish academic, ‘I’ll climb over the gate.’  As  you can see, she certainly doesn't look the athletic type.

Her driver hitched her up and I caught her as she fell.  She didn’t even take off her coat.  We arrived at the conference, with 7 minutes to spare.  I would have been happy to let the driver sort himself out but I had to go back and ring the security company to open the gate. 

 Tomorrow, we set off for our long-awaited trip to Japan.  First leg is the 11.15am flight to Sydney but the real trip begins when we join the 3.15pm flight with Singapore Airlines.

Wednesday, May 2nd .....

What a relief that May is here at last.  The countdown to our holiday takes on a new meaning when we reach the same month as when we leave.  It's now less than three weeks until we start on the first leg of the journey.  Of course, it’s a bit of an anticlimax as we have four days in Wollongong before we really start the trip by getting on the Singapore Airlines A380 at Sydney Airport.  But, there’s a magic in leaving the state, even if it’s just for a visit to the family.

I had a call this yesterday from the nursing home to tell me that Uncle Archie had blotted his copybook again. Someone had taken his glasses case so Uncle Archie thumped him.  The staff of the nursing home were pretty sanguine about it; it’s what you expect from a resident with dementia.

I’ve come across a great photograph to use as a desktop background.  I get tired of the same old picture so I change it frequently.  This one shows the Legend of the Seas cruise ship tied up at Osanbashi Pier in Yokohama.  What’s the odds of finding a photograph of the ship we are sailing on tied up at the pier we are sailing from?

Using the brilliant Street View facility on Google Maps, I’ve followed every inch of the walk from Nihonodori Station to the pier.  What did we ever do without computers to help us.  I suppose we stepped out and hoped that everything unfolded as it should.  Perhaps, we were less adventurous and avoided places where we weren’t sure of what we might find. 

Things have been very busy around here over the past couple of weeks.  Marilyn has been absorbed in the organisation of the Sustainability forums and, as usually happens in Tasmania, everyone leaves it to the last minutes to decide whether to come or not.   The first session is tomorrow in Hobart and we sent off the final list for the printing of certificates at 8.30 this morning.  Within 30 minutes, we had four more entries.  And, of course, the plan is to have as many at the sessions as possible, so you can’t say Too late!

One silly issue is the number of people who send an email to say, I’d like to book for me and another girl.  Or, I’d like to book for me and my daughter.  Does the daughter have a name or do I put on her name-tag Pat’s Daughter?  Marilyn’s tried to find out about Pat’s daughter by sending an email and by ringing and leaving a message but Pat hasn’t bothered to reply, so the daughter will end up with a hand-written name-tag unlike the beautifully printed ones for everyone else.  I hope she blames Mum.

My blogging program, Blogspot, has just changed the look of its 'Dashboard' supposedly to give it a more modern feel.  Rubbish, it's more difficult to use, not as elegant and the size of the font of the published post is smaller.  Another example of an unwanted change resulting in a less usable outcome.

Sunday, April 29th .....

The Model United Nations Assembly is a Rotary project which gives students the opportunity to practice their public-speaking skills in a real-life situation.  Teams of two represent a particular country and debate UN-type resolutions from the point of view of that country.  To make it interesting, teams are asked to dress in national costume.

 The students are from Year 10 and, this year, I was the Secretary-General so had to manage the proceedings.  Marilyn was my assistant for a session.  Normally, we get up to 50 teams but we had to change the date this year and numbers were down to 26.  It’s often a ‘girl-thing’ and, at one point, we had no boys entered at all.  However, at the last minute, a handful of boys popped up to make it a little more gender appropriate.

Most teams looked great and had gone to a lot of trouble to find the right costume for their country.  There is a prize for the best-dressed and we always ask the ladies of the Inner Wheel to judge.  It’s surprising how their opinions differ from mine.  I scratch my head sometimes, wondering what they saw when they picked the winner.  This year, for example, Japan won.  Of course, Japanese dress is so exotic and stands out.  But, one of the girls wore a Thai dress!  Looked lovely, but oh so un-Japanese.

One or two teams always stand out; mostly, it’s because they have an outstanding teacher who focuses on international affairs but, occasionally you meet a gifted individual who is passionate about the topic.  It’s rare to meet 2 individuals on the same team with similar ability.

 The two girls representing the United Kingdom were a hoot.  They had such posh voices and never deviated from the role.  When we had the Parade of Nations, the one in black came first, singing the British National Anthem, while the other one followed behind, waving her hand like the Queen.

This year, Ethiopia and Greece were brilliant but we gave the prize to USA who were aggressive, condescending, abrasive, bossy, threatening, and so on, just as you would expect USA to be.  As well, they knew their stuff and were able to argue America’s point of view in every debate.  For some reason, the girls chose to wear Superman T-shirts with fake pearls.  Clearly, there’s an image in their minds of what an American diplomat looks like.  They’ll go on to National MUNA in Canberra later in the year.  Teams from other states are usually from Grades 11 and 12 so our kids struggle a bit, but usually can hold their own.

I think MUNA is one of the best things we do.  It ticks so many boxes and is always a very worthwhile experience.  Because the students come from across the state, we provide billets for them and they get to make contact with like-minded individuals from other schools.  It can only be a good thing.