Bye as you Fly

Despedida, Adios, Te veo despues, Tchau, Ciao, So Long, See You, Goodbye, Farewell, Cheers, Até amanhã, Adieu, Au Revoir, À bientôt, Arrivederci, Addio, Rămas bun, Auf Wiedersehen, Bis dann, Tschüss, Tschau, Tot ziens, Daag, Doei, Farvel, Hej hej, probably followed by many scores more, if you’re at the United Nations. All greetings used when we’re about to part company.

When one goes off to work in the morning, (most) members of the family will say “goodbye” in some or other fashion, frequently an unconscious routine. When we go off on a trip for the day or even longer, the greeting will be more pronounced, generally a bit longer in duration as well.

But when one leaves on a life-changing journey, probably not to return for an extended period of time, how is the greeting performed? The jury is really out on this one, with no general consensus – it looks as if it’s a “play it by ear” event.

Jeanette and I (well, mostly Jeanette) have been saying goodbye to friends and acquaintances in all sorts of places. Amid many tears, there have been promises of “Don’t worry, I’ll call you regularly,” or “We’ll keep in touch by email,” or “I’ve got your Skype address, we’ll talk often.”

Girls tend to get cards on such occasions as well. I don’t.

I’ve looked at one she received this morning. I am concerned. A bunch of bubbled-up teddies saying farewell, with no glum tear-filled eyes in sight - they seem pretty darned happy to see us going!! Thank you, anyway. It’s a lonely place 33,000 ft above the earth, so it’s good to know that those who’ve remained behind might at least be enjoying a glass or two of bubbly.

Thank you to everyone who has expressed their best wishes. They are appreciated.

Welly Where?

On greeting a (former) American acquaintance with the explanation that I would be going away for Christmas, and not returning, he then enquired,

“Wellington Where?”

I guessed that he was trying to be smartarse, but he explained that he’d once driven through Wellington in Florida, USA.

Like any new immigrant, I’m keen on learning all about my new surroundings-to-be, so I consulted with Professor Wiki and Doctor Google. Short of a couple of other little Wellington villages, there are one or two by that name:

Wellington, New Zealand : The coolest little capital in the World

Wellington is the capital and second most populous urban area of New Zealand. It is at the southwestern tip of the Northern Island, between Cook Strait and the Rimutaka Range. The urban area is home to 397,900 residents. The city council area has 204,000 people.

The Wellington urban area is the major population centre of the southern North Island, and is the seat of the Wellington Region – which in addition to the urban area covers the Kapiti Coast and Wairarapa.

The urban area includes four cities: Wellington, on the peninsula between Cook Strait and Wellington harbour, contains the central business district and about half of Wellington's population; Porirua on Porirua Harbour to the north is notable for its large Maori and Pacific Island communities; Lower Hutt and Upper Hutt are largely suburban areas to the northeast, together known as the Hutt Valley.

Wellington also holds the distinction of being the world's southernmost capital city.

The pink area is the Wellington Urban area.

 

Wellington, Florida: A great hometown – Let us show you!

Wellington is a village in Palm Beach County, Florida. As of 2006, the village had a population of 55,584 according to the U.S. Census Bureau, making it the most populous village in the state.

Wellington was originally the world's largest strawberry patch, the Flying Cow Ranch. C. Oliver Wellington bought 18,000 acres (73 km²) of swampland in the 1950s in central Palm Beach County that eventually would be called the Village of Wellington. Wellington began as a planned unit development approved by Palm Beach County in 1972. For many years it functioned as a bedroom community with few shopping centres or restaurants until it was incorporated in December 1995. Wellington has become an international centre for equestrian sports. Far from its roots as a swampy backwater as compared to its glamorous neighbour Palm Beach twenty minutes to the east, Wellington today quietly draws a wealthy cross-section of international society, celebrity, and business personalities who consider it a required destination for their equestrian pursuits.

 

Wellington Kansas: The Wheat Capital of the World

Wellington was first surveyed on April 4, 1871 and named for the Duke of Wellington. It was designated as the permanent seat of Sumner County in 1872, winning out over competitor Sumner City. Trading with the cattle herds coming up the Chisholm Trail was an important factor in the early economy of the town.

 

Wellington, Colorado: Colorado’s Northern Gateway

Wellington is a Statutory Town in Larimer County, Colorado. The population was 6,289 at the 2010 census.

 

Wellington, Western Cape, ZA: Wagon-makers Valley

Wellington is a town in the Western Cape Winelands, a 45 minute drive from Cape Town, with a population of approximately 62,000. Wellington's economy is centred around agriculture such as wine, table grapes, deciduous fruit and a brandy industry. The town is located 75 km north-east of Cape Town, reached by the N1 motorway and R44.

Wellington, Somerset England:

Wellington is a small industrial town in rural Somerset, England, situated 7 miles (11 km) south west of Taunton, near the border with Devon, which runs along the Blackdown Hills to the south of the town. The town has a population of 13,696, which includes the residents of the parish of Wellington Without, and the villages of Tone and Tonedale.

 

* ^{Sources – Wikipedia.}

That sort of thing! Isn’t it just ‘typical’?

Relocating is not a matter of calling the movers, having them pack up your stuff and then shifting to a new home. It is an intricate web of activities which must be planned, sometimes in a specific sequence. Lack of adequate planning inevitably leads to lack of success, some tears, much swearing and possibly ending up in a botched half-baked move.

Besides most of the obvious projects to be completed before move-day, our list has an item called “Cancel the Milk.” No, we don’t have our milk delivered anymore – its a generic term for contracts, static data, agreements and other arrangements.

It entails contacting each service provider (phone, email, or both) and cancelling their service (and ensuring, more importantly, that there are no bills payable after move-day), or perhaps instructing them to change the email address to one which will still exist.

The sub-list reads: Bank, Credit Card, Investment, Pension, Satellite package, TV licence, landline and ADSL contract, mobile contract, car insurances, householders insurance, City taxes, Inland Revenue, Medical Aid…

I get to do this job, because, I’m reliable informed, “You’re good at that sort of thing..”

That sort of thing? Come on, that’s a euphemism for “dirty jobs”.

Ahem, what sort of thing? Waiting on the darned phone, whilst their consultants are busy (probably on smoke breaks or tea-times) and will not be very long… unless you would prefer to call back later… Hello…?

I find that most of these companies prefer to do the change by phone. Apparently, there is so much fraud via the Internet, that they….  hmm… One can never tell these days. Anyway, I’m the one who needs the action, so I knuckle down and start dialling. Top of the list is the bank – no, I get told, you need to physically visit the closest branch and… “make sure you’ve got your ID book and that sort of thing with you!”

The same for the credit card. This starts to sound boring – queues in banks are not my favourite.

Bottom line: It’s now all arranged and hopefully done, except for the landline/ADSL service from Telkom SA. I’ve sat on the line for 45 minutes waiting for 10210 option 4 to become available. Twice. I’m a bugger for punishment. So for my next trick. A cunning plan to drive to their shop in the mall and to surprise the fellow whilst he is not looking.

No surprise there… he knows nothing about discontinuation of their services. Mind you, I get the impression that he knows  nothing about everything. That’s a plus!

“No, sir. You can only do that sort of thing over the phone.”

He made it sound both lewd and objectionable. That sort of thing.

I’ve now spent my third 45-minute spell on 10210 option 4. No surprise there, I still couldn’t get that sort of thing done yet. Out of a dozen tasks, most of which needed me to contact the service provider by phone, the call about cancelling the phone is the only one which has failed. Dismally. Isn’t that just typical?

I’ll give it a rest and try again tomorrow. Luckily, I’m not busy trying to pack, and paint, and clean, and plan! So I can look forward to spending another productive 45 minutes … oh, for a speaker-phone!

Not down under– Our itinerary

Despite what the British may think, our destination cannot be termed “down under” from our point of view (mostly because we are down under, to start off with!). To describe our upcoming journey, I would prefer to use the term “up and around the corner” – up to Gauteng and then a-r-o-u-n-d the corner to Sydney.

Unless one is walking, talking in kilometres or miles is not all that informative – I prefer to talk in hours and minutes – we all know how that works. In the greater scheme of air travel, ours is not a particularly long trip, but for us yokels, it seems like forever.

I take the opportunity of logging this journey now, as I won’t be able to use a smartphone and write as we go. Leg 1 (flight 332) is a mere 2 hours from Cape Town to O.R. Tambo, where we get to sit around a tad short of 4 hours. As we take off, courtesy a flying kangaroo Qantas 747-400 (under Star alliance with SAA) and head east into the darkness.

We settle back in our comfortable (economical) seats after supper of chicken or beef, watch a bit of a movie, or watch the little plane icon on the blue screen doing speeds much higher than my car, but moving exceeding slowly across the little screen. Maybe get a bit of shut-eye – after all, we are flying towards the sunrise, so to speak.

Leg 2 (flight 7700) is a couple of minutes shy of 12 hours, which means that Kingsford-Smith Sydney arrives at some minutes before 6:00am – the time difference added in translates to a quarter to three in the afternoon instead. There goes most of Christmas Day, swallowed up by time difference. Last time we visited New Zealand, I did a bit of a read-up on Kingsford-Smith, here’s the Wiki reference, he was quite a guy!

After a 4 hour afternoon wait – the boring shift – we embark on leg 3 (flight 842) to the Land of The Long White Cloud, “around the corner” – a journey a  smidgen more than 3 hours and another 3-hour time difference. Yikes! As we touch down at Wellington airport, the official Christmas Day ended five minutes earlier. Some folks are still awake, we hope.

Look at your wristwatch if you haven’t changed the time yet – folks in Cape Town have yet to even sit down to a Christmas lunch!

Middle Earth

The box!

Getting older is something we all ignore, even though the signs are there. As Bryan Adams famously declared ©:

I wanna be young the rest of my life
never say no - try anything twice
til the angels come and ask me to fly
I'm gonna be 18 til I die - 18 til I die

can't live forever that's wishful thinkin'
who ever said that must of bin' drinkin'
don't wanna grow up I don't see why
I couldn't care less if time flies by
18 til I die - gonna be 18 til I die

it sure feels good to be alive
someday I'll be 18 goin' on 55! - 18 til I die

This morning I journeyed to a local shopping mall to collect a home appliance from the dealer. An appliance of nondescript dimensions, which the makers decided to pack in a regular rectangular Box . The total mass is less than 15kg (say 33 pounds in the old language) – the weight of your average six-year-old – or thereabouts. But the size of the Box was something else!

The sales assistant, a portly twenty-thirty-something lady heaved this monstrous blue and white carton onto the counter with a puff and a grunt. There may well have been another sound effect, but I didn’t detect it.

After I’d explained about just recently having had my sinuses done (amazing how we instinctively make excuses for the ageing process, I realized) and having declined her kind offer to carry the Box for me the two to three hundred metres where I’d left the car outside, I was happy when she shunted a junior off in the direction of the liquor outlet shopping trolleys at the end of the mall. Yes, liquor trolley should do it – they’re designed to cater for a full week-end’s worth of drunkenness – Plenty of space.

This Box! At dimensions of 72cm x 65cm x 28cm, you’re looking at something much more vicious than the largest suitcase. It’s like a huge rectangular set of bagpipes, which you cannot squeeze and which obstructs your view of the footpath ahead. You certainly need the undivided attention of both hands to make any sort of progress. But, that is no longer a problem, once the box is sitting, like an intoxicated smiling puppy, in the liquor trolley.

This mall has two levels of shops. I started off at the northern end on the lower level, with the car parked on the upper level at the southern end, on the other side of town, so to speak. No sweat, I need to drive the trolley into the elevator (we call it a ‘lift’) and go up one level. There’s scores of escalators everywhere in sight, but only two elevators, one on the north end and one on the south end.

When I reach the elevator closest to the dealership where I’ve just been, there’s six or eight huge trolleys waiting in a queue to go to the upper level. They’re all filled with… yes, you’ve guessed… liquor – how can people drink so much on a Sunday? Or perhaps they are stocking up for that religious holiday – the one where they need so much booze --  Christmas?

This waiting issue will need patience, and patience is something a young fellow like me hasn’t yet learned about.  No problem, I’ll simply speed the trolley down the lower shopping alley and do the elevator thing at the south end. Same result, easy peasy.

Or so I thought.

Finally I had the elevator precinct in sight (ok, ok – there was only one elevator, so let’s call it ‘the elevator shaft area’). At least there were no booze-laden trolleys queuing up here!  And I’m first in line, that’s more like it, I thought smugly, with the Box snoozing smugly in the liquor trolley.

Out of order for repairs.

What a filthy-worded public notice. They should be ashamed. Can they not use proper English? Disgusting language, and there are children around as well.

I then had one of my cunning plans. I could ditch the trolley and sort-of ‘coax’ the box on and off the escalator. On a busy pre-Christmas Sunday morning, other shoppers are not all that co-operative or friendly, the bastards. Where’s their Christmas spirit? Oh yes, in the liquor trolleys!

I have forgotten to mention that I was also carry loose items: a cellphone, a pair of reading spectacles in their bulky case, an elongated chequebook/ purse – collectively I’ll call them ‘the Paraphernalia’. I had no useful pockets, and I virtually needed both hands simply to accommodate the Paraphernalia.

You will appreciate that the presence of the Paraphernalia severely hampered my dexterity (lack of, actually) in actively managing the Box. I struggled and puffed with the Box, while shoppers streamed past me on the left and the right. One or two with extra-long legs, didn’t bother to side-step me, but simply stepped over my stooped sorry figure, huddled near the bottom of the ‘Up’ escalator.

I huffed and puffed once more, with other sounds unheard by the thronging flood of upward-bound shoppers, and abracadabra, I was standing on one step of the escalator with intoxicated puppy Box on the one just ahead. Cunning.

We were nearing the top where you must hop off and then slow down to avoid looking like a fool on the floor, or you simply catch your sandal in the works, trip, stumble and cause a commotion on the floor. Hint: If this should ever happen to you, create a huge din, scream in pain and anguish, and then make threats and promises about suing the mall management for grievous bodily harm. Some onlookers may of course merely glance at your sorry state in bewilderment and press on towards the liquor store.

‘Disgusting that an old man can be so drunk in public so early on a Sunday morning.’

Maybe that cunning plan was not so clever.

As we get to the top, I realize that I cannot see what I am doing, and I cannot judge when to lift the Box and when to step forward and off the escalator. This could end up nasty. I glance at the fellow on my left. He gives me a knowing smile!

See? Humankind can be kind. This upstanding young man has seen my Box and he has seen my predicament and will obviously assist me – that’s what a good education is all about – respect your elders and help others whenever you can. Bravo! Bravo, fine young man! I estimate three seconds to landing.

One.. two.. three..

The young man leaps forward, vaults over the box, almost elbowing me completely off the escalator, and then disappears into the teeming throng of liquor shoppers ahead. My Paraphernalia almost spills all over the neighbourhood.

Bastard. Selfish bastard. Uneducated bastard. Sometimes appearances can deceive. Sometimes bastards can disguise themselves as clean-shaven Bravo-people. It just goes to show.

By now, I’m herding the Box along the tiled floor rather than trying to carry it, keeping out of the main stream of feet, closer to the shopfront windows. My chest is heaving and I’m having a bit of a gasping-for-air spell. Nothing life-threatening, you understand, but not your pleasant Sunday morning stroll in the park, either. The passers-by will obviously wait for you to collapse and to foam around the mouth. Then they’ll pinch your Paraphernalia and rush off, ostensibly to alert a security guard of a possible heart-attack victim lying opposite the elevator.

Another clean-shaven young man, quite a bit older than Bravo-bastard, offered to help, but, embarrassed at my own incompetence, I tried to smile and waved him on in a friendly fashion. At least, I wanted my response to come across as friendly.

I’m not really an incompetent, you know, not really. I’ll be 18 till I die, that’s how I feel inside my body. 18 going on 67. 18 with 49 years experience, and we hope that experience still counts for something.

Moments later, the clean-shaven young man returned.

‘There’s a spare empty trolley over there, if you want one,’ he said in a caring voice, and pointed to a lonely-looking liquor trolley about twenty metres away. He smiled and walked off, without causing me any further embarrassment. Sometimes Bravo-people can disguise themselves as Bravo-people, you never can tell.

After being dragged for so many metres across the floor in public like a drunk arrested by the cops for public indecency, I suspect that puppy-dog Box was also quite pleased to see his new transport, as I lifted him off the floor, like a fresh 18-year old in a fitness camp. My breathing had already normalised. Box had also normalised.

The trip home was quiet. I had thought of letting Box sit on the back seat, but decided against it and let him sleep in the boot (some call it ‘the trunk’). Other motorists tend to label you as old and senile when you drive along apparently speaking to an inanimate Box!

St Andrew’s Day

30 November 2013. Co-incidentally St Andrew’s Day (Not St Andrews’), but is close enough. I was told by reliable sources, that our predecessors were MacDonald-Andrews from some or other Lochs or Glens or Cairns. I am not one for disputing reliable information, so there is possibly a spot of Scottish blood left in these veins.

Why should St A’s day be significant for us this year? Well, it is the day that I met Natasha Johnson (that’s her stage name). She is a travel expert (her title on her business card) and she arranges travel bookings. Therefore 30 November is really the birth of ‘How Green is Our Valley.’ Thank you, Natasha.

St Andrew’s Day is the feast day of Saint Andrew (Scots: Saunt Andra), the Patron Saint of Scotland, and it is Scotland’s official National Day.

Schools across Scotland hold special St Andrew's Day events and activities including art shows, Scottish country dancing, lunchtime ceilidhs, dance festivals, storytelling, reciting and writing poems, writing tall tales, cooking traditional Scottish meals, and bagpipe-playing. These events are not a part of a curriculum or expected as a norm, it is an individual schools' choice to recognise the event in celebration.

I suspect there may be a wee bit of drinking as well.