Arrival evolves into Awakening…and some observations on reality…worldwide

Sorry for being out of touch…still trying to get unpacked and rewired. I blog from the local library on the 15 minute meter….Though we’ve only been in country for one week, it feels like months have passed… I suppose that’s to be expected when so many new experiences are being flashed before you at every turn….. Especially after being awake 36 plus hours in transit, then driving from the airport with all traffic coming at you from unexpected angles, followed by the inevitable “mega-crash” into deep sleep and a resetting of the biological clock..I still can’t figure out how we lost Monday January 2, 2012…Literally…Flew out of LAX at 2345 on New Year’s Day and arrived 0730 on Tuesday Jan 3rd, after flying for 14.5 hrs…Hmmmm…Can someone else figure it all out and get back to me please…Disorienting for sure…perhaps we travel less well as we age….
 So, Arrival, then Awakening into mid-summer, hot, stunning sunshine, a plethora of strange, exotic birds with unfamiliar voices; Rainbow Lorikeets , Kookaburra, Herons and various raucous Parrots…and of course the foreign scented Eucalypts and their attendant Koalas…. Actually saw two in a local park on our first foray to do so….and one running on the ground, apparently to move to a shadier tree… The kids wanted to go find Koalas, and voila, photographic evidence of same below….As they sleep some 22 of every 24 hrs… we were quite lucky indeed.
But so as not to mislead our readership; even with the generally clean, well-kempt and designed public spaces around Cleveland and greater Brisbane in general, this is NOT paradise in reality…Very nice yes, paradise, well not exactly.. One observation gleaned over 30 plus years of travel is that US-style fast food, strip malls and the attendant obesity epidemic is a world-wide, metastasizing problem… Born in the good old U.S.A… and coming soon to a village near you… Much more on this later hopefully, but let’s just say, it’s not one of our more beneficent exports….. And the Aussies, being essentially a Celtic culture at core, sure do love their sweets, snacks and even fish n’ chips.. The most startling image so far; picture if you will, 90+ degrees, baking hot like lizards at the community pool, and a family actually had a doughnut maker, complete with mini-deep fat fryer, at their picnic lunch…..Hmmmm 🙁 (*#**^!?!…).  More on food issues to come….but some fat to chew on ’til then…. For now, Cheers! ddc

Oh, PS, no pictures of Koalas and other interesting things at this time. I have just been informed by the librarian, I can’t do that…(I can’t wait to get re-wired at home, but in the meantime, one thing I have learned, you never want to piss off your local librarian…).