Photo fun

M and I have been going through some of M’s photos from his various overseas trips between 1999 and the present. He is entering 12 in an international photo competition. More details after they are submitted and judged. We have brought it down to 21.

To give you an idea, here is one that didn’t make the cut…

He’s good, you know….

 

Quick and interesting: meet a blog

M was over this evening emailing various people with accounts of his South America/Antarctica travels. One such person, whom he had met on those travels, is the author of this blog:

 

M reappears

M called in yesterday, having returned the previous day from his South America and Antarctica trip. While overseas he allowed his hair to assume its natural grey. I think it looks distinguished.

 

Postcard from Patagonia

From Ushuaia, “mas austral del mundo” — the southernmost city in the world. It was written just before the trip to Antarctica. Of course the man himself will be back in Australia the day after tomorrow.

As an Australian, I did a double-take at one of the pictures on the postcard:

Hands Cave and Pinturas River Canyon…an amazing display of cave art 9,300 years old in the heart of southern Patagonia

 

Not quite random

My Oz Day involved tutoring in Chinatown, which did mean I saw what was going on at that end of town. Lots of people are out and about. I always get nostalgic — an emotion I am increasingly subject to but enjoy — when I see the vintage buses doing their rounds on Oz Day.

And no, that’s not me.

Bandjalung artist Andy sent me an SMS wishing me Happy Oz Day and warning me to use sun screen lest I got darker…

Nice email from a poet: Nasra.

Came here as was searching for Arab Books Reviews but led me to your blog ..I enjoyed especially reading an Australian

 

M back in Buenos Aires

… and attempting to find an earlier flight back to Oz. Otherwise he will be there for a while in February. I gather finding flights is not easy.

 

M back from Antarctica

He found it a very special place.

He returns to Australia at the end of this month.

 

Happy M

M is off to Antarctica tomorrow aboard the above.

LATER

I checked out the MS Marco Polo.

 

First of 2008

Happy New Year, everyone!

My first major post — which I commend as I took some trouble with writing it — is over on Blogspot (via Live Writer, which really helps!): Everyone has an opinion about Islam. And that is my posting for the day…

Otherwise I had a mission yesterday: to take a form M had sent me from Tierra del Fuego to the Redfern doc, who was fortunately open for business on New Years Eve, so that he could sign that M was fit to go on the sinking ship to Antarctica tomorrow. When I went in I said, “I’m OK, but I have this really strange request…” M had been to see him eighteen months ago, I should add, so he is on the books, even if such remote medical checkups did give the doc pause. “He’s as fit as a Mallee bull,” I said, “I mean, let’s face it, he got to Tierra del Fuego…” So the doc signed, I had the result scanned (I don’t have a scanner) and then emailed it back to M. I also tried faxing it with Skype + PamFax, the latter specially downloaded for the purpose, but didn’t have much success. However, all is well as M emailed that he received the email version and is now clear to go aboard.

 

2007 turns to 2008: 1 — how to feel like Methuselah in one easy TV show

I watched Wallis and Edward on ABC tonight, a 2005 Company Pictures effort for BBC, and rather well done I have to say. Curiously, it was made in Latvia.

My mother used to say that in her younger days people said she rather looked like the Duchess of Windsor; she was not entirely flattered. The Abdication was felt even here in Australia, I believe; my brother was born the year before…

Now to my aging. It is a fact the Abdication occurred just twenty years before I was in the equivalent of Year 8; seems nothing to me now, twenty years. (I was a stamp collector then, as The Rabbit may recall, as he saw the surviving evidence, and among my collection was one Edward VIII stamp, probably collected around 1956.)  At that stage anything pre-war was definitely antediluvian from my perspective, though I quite clearly recall King George VI and our singing “God Save the King” in school.

 

M way down south

Latest:

just wish u all have good xmas and happy new year, i am in ushuaia try get last minutes cheap ticket 2 antarctic, will have xmas with people met on travelling

 

M’s 18th 19th Australian Christmas

Even if he will be spending it on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.

M arrived in Australia from Shanghai in December 1989. He has told me how disappointed he was that year in Christmas, thinking it would be something like Chinese New Year back in Shanghai, only to find the streets of Auburn were less than vibrant on Christmas Day! (I met him around six months later.)

 

From our Patagonian correspondent

From M.

am going 2 4 days ferry 2 puerto natales from puerto montt tomorrow… trekking in torres del paine national park 4 one week…

 

Antarctica! M in Patagonia

From M:

in pucon in chile on my way 2 antarctica

Oh dear!