Extreme Painting
And the saga of the bathroom continues and expands. Poor Right Foot has lost his entire week's holiday and I'm struggling to keep up his morale with endless iced coffees and exaggerated compliments. When it all gets too much for me I escape to the cinema or the shops, hoping vainly for improvement when I return. And, as we only have one bathroom, I have now been holding on for a very long time.

Christmas: beautiful presents, food and drink with beautiful people around the pool at Grumpy and Petite's.
Boxing Day: snapping up bargains in the city.
Saturday: cricket at the G with Liz
Yesterday: more bargains, this time at Chadstone
Today: escape the heat with the Lord of the Rings.
And all interspersed with tasty left-overs and the sounds of poor Right Foot groaning and moaning as he paints the bathroom. It has taken days to scrape back 50 years of unwise colour choices and at leat one attempt to cover up the whole sorry mess with pink and yellow floral wallpaper.
And now, the new Barbara Trapido is ready for me to pick up at Stonnington library.Bliss

Yesterday the RACV finally squeezed me in to their sixty-cars-a-day hailstone damage assessment program. I got off with relatively minor damage, about $2000 worth. I said that as I was paying the excess anyway I wanted my scratches from various pole-wrapping episodes fixed as well. The assessor was a bit dubious at first but suggested I use my 'wiles' on the repairer and tell him that "the boys at the RACV van said you'd look after me." I wonder.

My favourite Christmas sight so far was the elderly woman, embarassed but determined, scalping tickets to Handel's Messiah outside the Melbourne Town Hall on Sunday afternoon.

Another lost weekend but the shopping is done.

Everytime I go into Border's I head for the T section of Fiction hoping to find a new Barbara Trapido and on Saturday I did! Joy to the world but mainly me.
After a couple more bookshops on Sunday I realised how many books I haven't read and am wondering if I'll get through them all before Alzheimer's kicks in. Probably not.

We ran into Petite Soeur at the Cinema on Saturday night, surprisingly dressed in leather. It seems New Boyfriend has a motorbike. Oh hell!!! I remember my mother's dismay at my courtship on the back of Right Foot's motorbike, but I also remember the exhilaration of taking those corners with my face buried in Foot's broad back and the nuisance of wondering what to do with the ruddy helmet when we arrived at our destination ready for a glamorous night out. I bet Petite will think of something.

Stress City. After a week of making merry interspersed with fruitless shopping trips I am now convinced that Christmas is a very very bad idea.

Thursday and Friday I spent at a research writing retreat for our academic staff, helping them with their database searching. It was very successful and S and I were extremely busy. The academics were mightily impressed. A few more brownie points for the library and a couple of excellent bottles of Yarra Valley vino for us. All good.

My renewed enthusiasm for Christmas has waned. I spent several hours on Saturday at Chadstone and a couple more on Sunday in Brunswick Street looking for gifts, excitement and the meaning of life. Didn't find anything.

Our tree does look wonderful though. All the decorations we have bought on our overseas visits are out of their wrappings for their annual airing. This year there are two new ones: the kiwi Petite Soeur bought and the Cheshire cat which has a grin that's much more than a smile. It is a classic, textbook example of a lear.

The main problem with Christmas is the monotonous regularity with which it comes around. It should be tied to some irregular astronomical event. Every few years the astronomers would announce,"Hey! There's going to be a Christmas!" THEN, I'd get excited. Maybe. Briefly.

Yesterday afternoon we had a spectacular hail storm here at Lilydale. It was weather like we used to have in the 50s but which I thought had gone away for ever. In the library rain pored in through various apertures in the ceiling and the noise was deafening. Now all our cars have dints in them and my mirrors were flattened against the side of the car. The question is: can I be bothered dealing with the insurance company to have it fixed? Boring.

We had a wonderful night at Mecca, out on the balcony watching the sun setting on the Yarra and celebrating Grumpy Girl's birthday. I feel a little seedy this morning however. Next time definitely only an entree and a shared dessert.
The waiter was very efficient and attentive but managed to offend me nevertheless. When I said I didn't need to see the dessert menu because I had already checked it out on the Internet, he made a patronising remark about how good it was that I was up with the technology. So I informed him (in the style of the heroine of "The Mummy") that I was a librarian and we had, as a profession, invented the Internet. That fixed him. And so for the benefit of the waiter at Mecca and any other doubters here is a quote from an article in Educause Review (Thanks to JP for sending it to me)

From the article, "Why IT Has Not Paid Off As We Hoped (Yet)"
(Educause Review, vol. 38, no. 6 (November/December 2003): 40-51.)

"The real heroes of the digital revolution in higher education are librarians; they are the people who have seen the farthest, done the most, accepted the hardest challenges, and demonstrated most clearly the benefits of digital information. In the process, they have turned their own field upside down and have revolutionized their own professional training. It is a testimony to their success that we take
their achievement for granted".

It's Grumpy Girl's birthday today and what a joy she has been to her nearest and dearest all these years. The Grump gives parenting a good name. Tonight we are going to Mecca where we went for Petite and Right Foot's birthdays too. It has spectacular views and wonderful food. Check out the menu at http://www.mecca.net.au/menu.htm

On Saturday we went to see Blithe Spirit - so corny, so predictable and so much fun.

Yesterday, I marked the remaining Marketing Communications exam papers then tried in vain to get Right Foot interested in the Davis Cup. The Aussie fans were decked out in gold and green but were waving red, white and blue flags or had them painted on their faces. Other countries wear colours that match their flags. I love this about Australia - patriotism will never topple over into Chauvinism while we can't make up our minds what our national colurs are.

Something surprising has just happened. For the first time ever I have been given a Kris Kringle present that I really like. Not merely do I like it but I was planning to buy one for myself. It is one of those spiral serving plates that will be a valuable contributor to my entertaining portfolio. Even though the presents were given out randomly S and I ended up exchanging plates. She was not the recipient I had it mind but seems happy. We had our staff Christmas lunch in a rusticky place in Healesville, warm sunny and nice.
Yesterday was our seminar at Hawthorn where I did my three presentations so now there is just one more big academic occasion this year and then it's time to party.
My weekend will be dominated by a pile of Marketing Communications exam papers to mark relieved by a visit to the Playhouse to see Blithe Spirit.

Yesterday was the annual Information Literacy Seminar with Grumpy Girl's graphic featuring prominently on all the promotional media. Apparently a couple of regular attendees declined to come this year because they thought the theme was too risque. So the venue was filled with just the saucier, racier type of librarian who all had good fun with the notion of librarians "embedded'' with the academics. The graphic was on the showbag given to delegates and on the way home on the tram I was accosted by a Customer Services Officer wanting to know where he could get one. Was it a shop? What did he have to buy? I was beginning to glow with maternal pride but then he said, "You see, I know someone called Gale Thomson." What? It was only then that I noticed the name of the seminar's sponsor, Thomson Gale was emblazoned accross the top of the bag. Maternal love is the blindest of all.
The seminar was, as usual, a great day - so social, such yummy food, so many old buddies, such comfort and style at VU's city campus.
At lunch time I walked up to the Charities Card Shop at the cathedral. I hadn't been there for three or four years and something had changed. They now have security checks before you can go in - to the crypt in St. Paul's Cathedral! Once inside however, it was the same lovely place. Lots of elderly ladies to fuss around you, anxious to help. This is the only place in Melbourne that comes close to the feel of a Country Women's Association function - except no pikelets. I was careful not to buy any cards that would support a charity run by the treacherous Protestants: this would have caused my mum to spin in her grave. I stuck to secular organisations like the Royal Flying Doctor Service, Amnesty International and the East Timor Association. I bought some from the Mercy Hospital for Mothers for Mum's sake: the IRA did not have their cards out. I bought two from the Alzheimer's Association which had pictures painted by dementia patients. They were both way better than I could do even now with most of my marbles still in place. Grumpy Girl did not inherit her talent from me.

I seem to have porked up a bit over winter and last year's summer clothes are uncomfortably tight. Dieting's a bore so I've been shopping for some fat clothes. I bought two very practical, style-free, go-with-everything skirts in the hope that my bod will gradually return to normal while I'm wearing them out. This may be a little optimistic over the party season which is already in full swing here. Actually, I'm getting into Christmas this year, having had a year off it while living in a Muslim country last year - a new zest for Christmas is not something I ever expected to experience.

Tim Winton's 'Cloudstreet' has been voted Most Popular Australian Book in a poll run by the ABC while my pick, 'The harp in the south' came in 14th, behind even Bryce Courtney. Good God.

Wednesday is the CRIG seminar where Grumpy Girl's caricature of me gets another airing. This time I am 'in bed with the academics'. Thursday we are having our own Information Literacy forum and I am giving three short presentations which may or may not fascinate and amaze all who hear them . Friday is the first of many a Christmas knees-up, the exams will be over and half our staff are banished to live off their husbands for two months. Such is the fate of academic librarians.

Last night was the National IQ Test. Right Foot and I were both off to a flying start, getting the first fourteen questions right but it was downhill from then on. Arithmetic and rotating shapes in mid-air (why would I ever want to do that?) are not what we're good at. We both did well on the memory tasks which was reassuring. Why is it that when I see a column of figures my eyes glaze over and my brain goes into reverse? I have a Masters degree in Business after all. But the compulsory accounting subject in that course took years off my life. I had to get a tutor, an Indian girl half my age to get me through it. She always talked about rupees in her examples as I tried painfully to understand. Maybe if Eddie had talked rupees I would have done better, but I doubt it.

Yesterday was the funeral of the second of my colleagues to die of cancer in the last couple of months. Younger than me, this one. It is very scary and very sad.

Friday was my birthday. After the usual cakefest at work Right Foot and I went to a knees-up for TAFE librarians where I found myself at a table with my current boss and three of my former bosses. Sounds like an uncomfortable situation but we had fun. The venue was a student hospitality restaurant and the service was the usual off-the-wall stuff that you get in those places. On Saturday I had my real party with Grumpy Girl and Petite Soeur who gave me a most bodacious blouse which I love. There's nothing like a well-chosen gift to make you feel cared for. Right Foot gave me a camera to replace my recently deceased Minolta which had consistently produced surprisingly good photos considering the approach and attitude of the photographer. It was a very different birthday than last year's which I celebrated at Denis', a tourist trap restaurant in Sarawak with only Right Foot to celebrate with me.

On Sunday, RF, Petite and I went to see 'In the cut', very gripping, very gritty New York edgy crime thriller. Best performances I had ever seen from any of the cast.

Z has sent me some photos of her recent trip to Melbourne including those taken at the NTEU rally. There she is, carry a placard and marching down Collins Street. A pinko Malaysian librarian. I wonder if she has shown the photo to anyone in Kuching.

Following on from the news that Petite and Grumpy both made it into the top twenty in the HQ short story competition, we now hear that Grumpy has made it to the final ten. They both write so well. I remember them reading their stories to me as children while I was rushing around doing housework and how they would stop me in my tracks with with an image, an apt phrase or a subtle twist in a well-constructed plot. Clever cloggs both.

Maternal Boast
The magazine HQ has been running a short story competition and yesterday Grumpy Girl and Petite Soeur received news that they had both been shortlisted. Because of the identical surname and address the judges thought Petite had submitted two entries but she assured them that Grump is her sister so they said, "Well, she has finished in the final 20 stories too!" Grumpy's story is about how a map triggers the end of a relationship and Petite's story is about a Stop & Go Man who swallows a bird. Excellent reading both, I have copies should anyone be interested.

We are all still grappling with our amazing new phone system but this morning I mastered 'Call forwarding' which has made a big difference.

The Melbourne Cup
Yesterday Right Foot and I went to our first ever Melbourne Cup with three other Swinnie librarians, their Handbags and 123,000 others. I wore a skirt and jacket from Jigsaw (at Brandsmart), a silky tee from Ralph Lauren (also at Brandsmart), a rose in my hair (from Myer, city store) and completed my ensemble with a $2 pure silk scarf from Arthur Dailey in Swanston Street.
Right Foot wore his Country Road suit and looked very spiffing. However, he hated the whole thing. It was very crowded and got very hot. The only cool place was the lavoratories and there were groups of young women sitting on the loo floor, sipping Champagne and resting their feet. I got my best photos in there.
Right Foot's aversion to public toilets made him decide not to drink anything at all, not even water. He sat on the Esky with his back to the action reading a book called 'The history of Heidelberg and its people: 1838-1900'. I tried to get him interested in Paris Hilton, New York Party Princess, but he said he'd rather have a Party Pie. He went home an hour before the big race on a train packed with other poopers.
I soldiered on to see the housekeeping money come in at 4th, 5th and 6th places. Great. Of the three horses I had in the Swinnie sweep, one was scratched, one came in second and the other is still running. Six horses altogether and I won $7 and lost untold millions. Some tedious nag no-one had ever heard of won.
Within five minutes of the end of the race, all the Swinnie librarians and their Handbags were on the train back to Queen's Road where we watched the last two races on TV and polished off the rest of the food in coolth and comfort.
I am really glad I've been to the Melbourne Cup at last. I have it out of my system now. Actually, it's a bit boring.

Z is safely back home now and seems very pleased with her trip. She has gained a lot in understanding and had a few victories. She is also very happy with the 'stuffs' she bought, particularly the two sheepskin rugs for the floor of her new apartment. These should be an object of great interest in Malaysia.

Yesterday I mentioned to Right Foot that our little fingers were so small that they didn't serve much purpose at all and we could easily get by without them. This sparked a conversation about the things we couldn't do without a little finger. Three are:
that telephone gesture people do by folding down their middle three fingers and putting thumb and pinky to their mouth and ear;
the finger cocking that's required when drinking tea in polite society;
and punks who have HATE tattoed on their knuckles would have to settle for HAT or ATE.

The delightful Z is winging her way home today after two weeks in Melbourne. She made some interesting comments about the differences between here and Kuching. She thought our morale was much higher and the work ethic stronger. Staff here have initiative and don't require supervision. We also manage to have a lot of fun along the way.
The most unusual experience she had was participating in the NTEU industrial action last Thursday. She marched through the streets to the rally with the rest of the staff. Such opportunities are rare in Dr Mahathir's Malaysia. On the same day he made his infamous remarks about the Jews.

I'm not really into nostalgia but yesterday morning we got up at 8.30 to watch 'Basil Brush', a revival from the seventies we used to love about a fox and his humans. It is full of corny often predictable jokes. I remembered watching Basil in hospital in 1979, still in pain a week after a kidney operation and the agony of laughing as Basil visited Germany and was constantly greeted as Herr Brush. I still have the scar from that surgery and I'm certain it became wider during that episode of Basil Brush.

This time last year I had been in Malaysia for ten days and the Bali bombings had just occurred. I remember hating being away from home and people who felt the same sense of grief. There have been lots of commemorations over the weekend but I did not see much because, ironically, I was entertaining my Moslem colleague, the delightful Z while she is in Melbourne from Kuching.
Actually we had a wonderful day. It was very pleasant showing off the city and seeing things through her eyes: Victoria Market where she bought two large sheepskins for her new appartment, Southbank for lunch and a Charmaine's ice-cream, Chloe at Young & Jackson's, Federation Square, the Circle Tram up to the State Library, Bourke Street Mall, the arcades and laneways, the parks and finally, the casino where Z won a dollar on the fruit machine.
She is staying in the VIP suite on campus - magnificent! I wish that sadist who built our accommodation in Glasgow could see how we treat our guests.

It is now a year since we first went to Sarawak and coincidentially the permanent Information Resources Manager is currently visiting our Melbourne campuses. I have been catching up on all the news and things seem to be going swimmingly which is very gratifying. I would love to go back and see the results of my three months hard graft.
The delightful Z is clearly doing a great job.
She remarked on the different shade of our green and it certainly is much lighter and brighter than the jungle green of Kuching. I took her to Safeway where she bought crumpets, she seemed quite fascinated with those.

The planet Mars is relatively close to us right now so Right Foot and I went along with the masses to the sixth floor of the car park at Victoria Gardens Shopping Centre last Wednesday to view it through a telescope but we were late and it was cloudy and cold so we gave it up.
The next night, earlier and more warmly dressed we drove out to a park near La Trobe University with another group of hopefuls. Mars looked very pretty when looked at with the naked eye, in its brief periods of visibility. It was another cloudy night and another long wait but eventually we got our 30 seconds each at the telescope. And what did we see? I couldn't quite make out all the features I'd heard about but the polar caps were visible. I could see it was a planet not a star. It looked like a small disc, a communion wafer, pale and translucent.
And we made lots of new friends in the queue just like lining up for finals tickets

Today I have submitted a copy of our Elit conference paper, edited (i.e. slashed by 3000 words) for publication, we hope, in the International Journal of E-literacy. I hope they will accept it and won't want further ammendments because I am OVER IT bigtime. Time to move on.

Second week back at work after our adventures in Scotland and England so I have finally stopped saying, "This time last week we were on the London Eye or walking along Hadrian's Wall, etc." It was all so wunnerful that I have tried to hold on to it as long as possible.
Our paper went very well - there were lots of questions, lots of interest and a full house. All the Aussie presentations were very well attended. We rule at that stuff!

On Friday night I went to the Mary Owen Dinner. It was my second but there were women there who had been to all eighteen. The Moorabbin Town Hall was packed with women in the feminist colours of purple, green and white. Most were in their forties and fifties but quite a number were much older and there was a sprinkling of youngies too. I was introduced to Mary Owen Herself. Imagine - you have a retirement dinner and have to hold it in the Hawthorn Town Hall because there is no restaurant big enough. And then you hold it again every year in town halls around Melbourne and the dozens of people are turned away.

It was a fabulous night.

Well, I am sufficiently recovered from my dicky knee to accept Petite Soeur's invitation to walk in the Mother's Day Classic again this year. After all the treatments I endured:
acupuncture
boring exercises
painful physiotherapy
drugs
shark cartilege tablets
rest
fish at every meal
etc.
it is impossible to know which one did the trick so I am perservering with all of them except, for the time being, the physio which is expensive as well as painful.
I checked my collection of remedies and found only one is from the dodgy pharmaceutical lab - Heaven knows what's in it - it's like buying a chiko roll at the football.

Second day back at work after our six-day holiday in the Daintree courtesy of travel agent's muddle. It was wonderful to see North Queensland and snorkelling on the Barrier Reef was unforgettable, exhilarating and hugely satisfying. Great grub up there too, especially the barramundi.

Now it's back to lots of hard work including writing the conference paper. We're desperately hoping that SARS will not prevent us going to Glasgow. That would be too disappointing to bear.

I don't think I ever recorded the story of my birthday bracelet so belatedly I will. When I was in Kuching, Grumpy Girl and Petite Soeur sent me a bracelet for my birthday but it never arrived. They were both extremely upset and so was I. I told them I would prefer not to even know what the gift was so they didn't tell me and bought me another very similiar one for Christmas. Very nice, very me.
A month or so earlier I had received a card from Pos Malaysia telling me a parcel was waiting to be claimed. Thrilled and relieved I sped to the PO only to find not the bracelet but three tubes of Vegemite which a dear friend had sent to alleviate our homesickness. It was wonderful to have it but, at the time, something of a disappointment.
When we arrived at Melbourne Airport nearly two months after my birthday, Customs took some of our stuff for fumigation. The same thig happened to Petite when she arrived couple of days later. Another two months went by and Petite received a card to say her fumigated goods were now available for picking up at Balaclava PO. When Right Foot went to get the parcel for her there were TWO. One was the fumigated cane balls as expected but the other was the bracelet! It had taken four months for it to go to Malaysia and back and the parcel had obviously been opened but the bracelet lay unharmed in its wrapping. I can wear the two together, they look very well.

My wounded knee feels a little better. Maybe it's the powdered shark, maybe it's the acupuncture.

The physiotherapist tried acupuncture on me this morning but it doesn't seemed to have helped much. He has also suggested I buy some powdered shark whch is supposed to build up cartilege. I will get some tomorrow: I am very sick of not being able to walk.
Yesterday I limped around the Ned Kelly exhibition at the State Library feeling more sorry for myself than poor Ned, martyr that he was.

We are trying to cobble up funds so that Susan and I can both go to Scotland to present our paper. A is sending begging letters on our behalf to all the cashed up departments who could conceivably cough for us. Here's hoping.

Lefty
Susan and I submitted an abstract for a paper to be presented at a conference in Glasgow and we found out this morning that we have been accepted. Great excitement for half an hour and then the harsh realities of who would pay for us surfaced, as we knew it would. I am determined to go somehow. We have both given papers before but not overseas and I am NOT going to miss this chance - not sure when I will get time to write it though.

I'm soldiering on with the orthotics in my shoes - they seem to be helping to make me walk straight and I am sooo sick of limping and languishing.

Lefty
We went to see 'Ned Kelly' which isn't bad but Righty was irritated by the unintended anachronisms. The major problem was with the carriages of course, as Righty is the world expert on Australian horse-drawn vehicles. If you have seen the film you might remember the scene where Naomi Watt's horrible husband stumbles as he clambers into the carriage. Well no wonder he stumbled! The klutz was getting in the wrong side and not only that, everybody was sitting in the wrong seat. The children were facing the horses. Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. They should have had their backs to the horses and Naomi should have been in the 'seat of honour', facing the horses and on the right hand side. Klutzy should have got in from the left and sat on the left. But it gets worse. In another scene we see a carriage stored inside a stable with the horses. According to Righty, the ammonia in the horses' dooings would have had a major deleterious effect on the carriage's varnish and no-one would have subjected their carriage to such treatment. So there.

Lefty
Last Friday Susan and I went to a cocktail party hosted by the PVC to bring together all the Kuching veterans, wannabes, soon-to-bes and backroom boys. A very blokey occasion, there were about four women and 60 or so men, mostly engineers. Hmmm. Good grub though and a passable white wine.

This morning I paid (boy, did I pay!) my second visit to the physiotherapist who repeated the pummelling he gave me last week. I hope it is helping - my knee stills feels very dodgy. He told me there was a lot of tension in my body (what else is new?) and that I should walk like a West Indian, loose, limber and relaxed. So we practised together, large Sri Lankan physio and small, fair-skinned woman in surgical gown walking like West Indians around the tiny office with its panoramic views over St Kilda Road. Suddenly a window cleaner appeared in one of those contraptions they sit in, swinging gently in the breeze and staring unswervingly at his sqweedgie.

The Left Foot
Back at work at Lilydale today still smarting about the loss of our holiday in China but greatly relieved to hear that SR has gone to Kuching to take care of User Ed and the cataloguing backlog. I spoke to her on the phone and it was really weird to visualise her sitting at 'my' desk while I was alone in our usually shared office. My Kuching adventure is over but I was thinking of them all today and suppose I will for quite some time. I hope the first hand experience I had will have long-term benefits for the library there and for me as well.

This will be the last blog from the Frontier Librarians as we return to the normal pattern of our lives, beginning with the celebration of our 33rd wedding anniversary on Thursday 16th. We will take the blog down in early February. Thank-you for all the positive feedback we received: the number of readers made us aware of our wider audience and changed the nature of our entries from the family orientation we had anticipated. Our daughter, Meredith, aka Grumpy Girl set up the page for us so we could easily keep in touch with her and our other daughter, Hilary, aka Petite Soeur.

When Hil was studying German in secondary school she learnt that the word for mother was 'mutter' and began calling me that, soon abbreviating it to Moot. By extension, that made her father 'Foot' and the plural obviously 'Feet'. I am left-handed and left-footed so it was not hard to tell who was who. None of you guys ever needed to know this piece of family lore but as some have been curious, it was time to explain.

I will miss the blogging experience but there is nothing more to say except maybe Salamat Datang or should that be Auf Weidersien (or something).

The Right Foot:
For me, KL will forever be associated with the mystical law of Bad Things that Come in Threes (See the preceding Tale of Woe from the Left Foot) - I must do a Google search and see if there is a proper name for this phenomenon. But no doubt my rather jaundiced view of KL is also profoundly coloured by the (misplaced) perception of Eastern Malaysians that KL is a fabulous city whose nature is compounded from the essences of those great trading centres like Baghdad, Rome and Tyre. And I must admit it really is an attractive place with vibrant and often admirable architecture, really efficient services and lots of bustling life wherever you care to look. It is a fine city, but after Kuching, you really couldn't live there.

After sampling life in Kuching, KL looks too much like your standard wanna-be modern identikit Southeast Asian city, secure in its very own economic miracle and keen to emulate Singapore or Hong Kong in outward and visible display, high energy output and general brouhaha. To that end, it is busily knocking over whole streets of charming shophouses, replacing them with mega-malls and ever-larger extensions to existing mega-malls and carving freeways through its parklands. I really can't imagine its inhabitants slowing down at sunset to walk along the riverfront - after all, there are still several hours left of quality shopping time left! The nice thing about Kuching was the sense that a visitor from 1850 would feel pretty much at home there today - water taxis still criss-cross the Sungai Sarawak (even if they now advertise Lipton's admirable Yellow Label tea); while the river pirates are still kept at bay by the White Rajah's toy fort, peeping over the feathery trees that line the river. Real shopping still goes on in the markets and carpenters still work in Jalan Carpenter. Real life goes on in the kampongs all along the river banks; fishermen fish right under the hugh sign proclaiming that fishing is prohibited at this point and you can still meet and greet kingfishers lording over the secondary jungle not ten k. from the city centre. People stop wherever the mood strikes them to appraise the durians and debate the merits of red or white garlic. Moreover, cats really still rule in Kuching! Long may it remain that way!

The Left Foot
Alas, the new year started even more badly then the old one ended. When we tried to check in at MAS, it was discovered that the dates of our flights and accommodation were out of synch. with the dates of our Chinese visas. Major stuff-up by travel agent. The guy found a supervisor and although she was very sympathetic, there was nothing she could do. Her exact words: "If I let you get on that plane you will not like what the Chinese will do to you when you get off". It was a public holiday and no hope of acquiring an emergency visa. Also, our visas for Malaysia had expired on 31st. I was stunned, shocked and so disappointed. I couldn't believe what was happening. Within two hours we were on a plane heading for Melbourne, feeling like we were being deported. We were in the last two seats, not together, and surrounded by Poms with streaming colds and hacking coughs just to add to our miseries.

Since then I have been battling with the travel agent for compensation, gradually moving up the hierarchy. Red tape, red tape!

There have been some consolations. however:
Steve Waugh's innings last Friday afternoon;
dinner at Saigon Rose with Grumpy Girl and Petite Soeur that night;
Right Foot reunited with his banjo and his shed;
and the big, blue sky after months of overcast weather.

Still, it was an ignominious end to our travels and I am still longing to see Shanghai before it is finally ruined by commercial development.

On Monday it is back to Lilydale for me, though many of my thoughts will be with colleagues in Kuching on their first day of semester. Good luck to them all.

The Left Foot
New Year's Eve in Kuala Lumpar and we went with several trillion others to see the fireworks at the Petronas Towers. After minding our spot for an hour and a half, Right Foot discovered at a quarter to twelve that his pocket had been picked. People had been warning us for months about the possibility of this but now it had finally happened. Right Foot was anxious to return to the hotel to cancel his cards, etc. so off we dashed, seeing only a couple of fireworks as we headed for the railway station. RF was on the phone for an hour and a half ringing banks in three countries, trying to arrange emergency cash and cards. We finally tumbled into bed, setting the alarm for 6 o'clock, in view of our early flight to Shanghai, city of my dreams.