next trip already

June 19, 2009 by tneuage.

A few days from returning to Australia already. June 23rd on the way to Shanghai then Australia - India - Holland - Germany then back to NYC at the end of August.

Since last post we spent

with the best being Ferrara Italy for a couple of weeks.

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What a long trip this has been.

March 28, 2008 by tneuage.

Sacha asleep in the lounge and so is girl friend Georgia.

What a long trip this has been.

The last time Sacha and I were asleep in the same house in New York was in March of 1992. We were visiting my father and brother in Clifton Park. Mum had died several months earlier and the last time we were together with her was in 1984. It is a long way from Australia so the visits were not frequent. My brother Robert was dying of AIDS. We stayed in his upper east side apartment for a week before going to Clifton Park and staying with my father. He would come to visit us in October of that year, age 87. The boys and I rented a mobile home and with dad in tow we drove around Australia for a few weeks. Those were great times. Leigh was nine years old and talking about pitching for the New York Yankees. Sacha, now asleep in my lounge here on Albermarle Road, Brooklyn, was eleven and as worldly as an eleven year could be. We had already traveled together between Australia and New York a couple of times and we had ‘done’ France, Germany, Hawaii, California and New York along with too many places in Australia.

I just got back last night from Holland. Sacha and Georgia came over from Melbourne to stay at our apartment. I left for Tennessee the day after they got here for new step-son Chris Moreman’s wedding. Then three days later Narda and I were off to Holland for the parent’s 80th birthday celebration. That went for ten-days. If it weren’t for the in-laws there would only be Sacha and I left. Marrying Narda gave me three step-sons and a large family of sisters and parents and lots of relatives in Holland and in Australia. I have my own step-sister and step-brother who I have met once - in Hawaii - but outside of them there is no one left in the States for me.

Since Sacha and I prowled New York back in 1992, my father has died (last year 23 January - three weeks after I started a new teaching job at The Dwight School), Leigh - the tragedy I can not shake - killed himself soon after turning 20 - after achieving his goal to play professional baseball but there was something wrong with him that neither the LA Dodger’s psychiatrist could fix and I did not know about - he went to Sydney then left the world August 16th 2003. Brother Robert died in 1992 soon after our visit.

Now I have three days with Sacha before he and Georgia go to Thailand for a week then back to Melbourne. I get to see Sacha often, we spent a few days together last July and in August in Melbourne and I manage to see him each August since Leigh died but always in Australia. This will probably be our last time together ever in New York or even in the States. Sacha was born in Hawaii and then we moved to Australia soon after. I will see him this coming July-August in Melbourne and again on Christmas Day 2008 as we already have our ticket. It has become easier flying back and forth to the point that I do it about twice a year.

I miss seeing Leigh. I have no idea what the future holds and of course no one really does but as long as I have memory, Sacha’s visit this week to NYC will be one of my favorites. We have gone a long ways since the two boys and I lived together in South Australia (Hackham, Mt. Compass, Victor Harbor, Middleton - we lived in ten houses in ten years). I always thought that by this time I would be watching Leigh playing baseball but that died. I did get my PhD after seven years of too much work and sorrow and Sacha is an happy adult of 27. I have been married for six years and that has been good and has given me a connection to Holland and many other places. But I am still the same person of the 1980s that had great dreams and believed that my two children and I would have an incredible trot on this planet. We were so poor and our life was so rough but there was a good quality and depth to it. I enjoyed living and playing with my children in Australia with the great plan of us all living in the USA one day. Here I am living in NYC and Sacha is visiting. It is as close to my dream of the 1980s that I will ever come to.

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Southern Roadtrip December 2006

January 2, 2008 by tneuage.

with photos Online at http://ournews.mobi/georgia_blog.html

Monday, December 31, 2007 8:06 PM Videos for these couple of days are at:
➢    http://ournews.mobi/LeighGeorgia.htm ~ Trip to Leigh’s last home and stadium
➢    http://ournews.mobi/crossville.htm ~ our resort hood
➢    http://ournews.mobi/album/Chris-arriving-USA.wmv ~ Chris’ arrival in the US
➢    http://ournews.mobi/album/Georgia/index.html ~ photos of trip
Leigh’s apartment
I had rung Greenleaf Apartments in Phenix City (yes that is how they spell it, this is Arkansas) a month after Leigh died. There were some papers in his belongings that included rent receipts for Apartment 1716. The person I spoke to remembered Leigh as the spokesperson for the South Georgian Waves’ players. I never got to watch Leigh play for the Dodgers. Gradually since 2003 I have been visiting places he played and leaving his baseball card. Outside of Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney the only other place I have gotten to so far has been Blue Jay Stadium in Toronto. Leigh pitched there in 2001 when the Australian Under-18 squad played the Canadian U-18 National team on the way to Edmonton for the U-18 World Series. I left the card this same time of year 2004.

We left Manhattan last Friday noon getting as far as Winchester, Virginia before driving anymore was too much. Winchester seemed like a nice town, it was nine pm, so we found a reasonable motel with a one-toothed heavily tattooed lady at the front desk.

We were on the road by eight Saturday morning, arriving in Crossville, Tennessee, a short eight-hundred fifty mile drive at five PM (about the same as a drive from Adelaide to Sydney). We had found Mariner’s Pointe Resort on the Internet and booked it for two- weeks. The place is OK though a bit dated. We don’t have wireless in our unit, two storey two bedroom with lounge and kitchen, our own levy on to the lake but it has been quite relaxing. We use the gym and spa every day as we get caught up on reading and planning future trips further a field.

Narda’s son Chris arrived from Australia a couple of days ago with fiancé visa in hand and wife-to-be with us to collect him from the Knoxville airport. (We will be back in Tennessee March 13th for their marriage in Chattanooga then on to Utrecht, the Netherlands for Spring Break). After meeting Jessica’s parents in Maryville (near the Knoxville Airport) we drove the eighty miles back to Crossville. After a few days of too much relaxation on a rainy afternoon we decided to drive to Georgia to see where Leigh last played and to Alabama to see where he last lived. Fifteen minutes after first thinking of going for a drive we were online downloading a Yahoo driving map to east-central Georgia. We arrived in Rome, Georgia by dark and the next morning we went to the stadium there.  I had followed one of Leigh’s games there in early 2003 and I still have a link to the news reportage of that game on Leigh’s memorial page.  We took some photos and went on to Columbus, which was home for the South Georgia Waves. As the baseball stadium was closed for winter break we could only walk around the outside and along the river near it.

We were in Atlanta by evening and stayed outside the Stone Mountain Village. The idea was that we would go to the top the next day (Sunday the 30th), however, it was raining so hard we just drove back to Crossville, a five hour drive. By the time we got home in the afternoon we had added another six hundred miles to our trip.

It is New Year’s Eve but it does not look like either of us will make it until midnight. At 10.30 I am ready for bed; no doubt it has something either to do with our age or with being in such a boring town as Crossville.  Wednesday we are off to Chattanooga for a few days to help Chris and Jessie get settled in their new home. I think we will be painting and practical stuff like that along with some tourist stuff like riding the Incline Railway and going to a University of Tennessee basketball game (Jessie is doing her Masters in Geology there) and hopefully to a pub that will have good country and western music. Saturday we will drive as much of the nine-hundred miles home as possible with the thought that we will be back in New York City by noon Sunday and off to work the following Monday.

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Another trip come and gone

August 26, 2007 by tneuage.

Another trip come and gone. This is our sixth round-the-world journey in succession (previous times there were gaps of several years in between); our tickets originate in Sydney and stop in New York for a ten-month working time to pay for the next trip. We have our ticket in hand to return next northern summer to Adelaide. See our videos for 07, 06 and before and photo albums that are slideshows and etc.

We saw so many contrasts; from Cambodia’s incredible poverty where one US dollar is more than a day’s wage for most people to a newly build basement basketball court in a privately owned home that has been dug into a cliff in Manchester-by-the-Sea in Massachusetts which our neighbours say already has cost more than a million dollars. See our video at http://ournews.mobi/basketball.htm.

Now we are back and looking forward to a year of work with a couple of breaks until going home (Australia). We are doing a two-week road-trip through the south at Christmas time and during a two-week break in March we are going to Utrecht, The Netherlands for our parent’s 80th birthday.

We thought we would have a good rest in Australia but for the six weeks we were there we managed to do too much once again. From preparing a two week stay in Holland for us and Narda’s three sisters and her three sons plus the parents and a preparation for Narda’s son, Chris’ wedding in Chattanooga, Tennessee (and watching him go through all we went through to get a Green Card to get married to an American), the weekend before we go off to Holland (her parents are staying with us in NYC for a week before the wedding. Getting everything in place for two 80 year olds to stop in NYC, go to Tennessee, then to Holland, then back to Australia is quite detailed), as well, I am buying a round-the-world ticket for my son Sacha. He and his girl friend will stay at our NYC home for two weeks while we are in Holland (this seems to be a highlight of their trip having our home when we aren’t there for two-weeks, hummmm), then they are seeing Europe for a month. Of course the Holland stay will be good. And as if we didn’t have enough to contend with we bought a house-land package at one of Australia’s first totally green village at Lochiel Park in Adelaide and we took much too much time choosing and changing our minds over all the bits and pieces for our interior. This is much different than our Victorian homes in upstate New York that we spent years renovating then left to live in NYC. The Lochiel Park house should be near finishing when we get back next July-August and we will go back Christmas 2008 in hopes to rent it out until we someday move there. As if that was not enough to do I visited nine international baccalaureate schools in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney as part of my work. So as all holidays go we are resting today (Sunday) the day before going back to work.

One of the things I did not miss was American television. We use to complain that even with a couple of hundred channels there was nothing worthy of watching so we canceled our cable subscription months before we left. It is interesting to note that we rarely saw any news of anywhere/anything for the past couple of months; television, newspapers, magazines or even on the Internet. It did not affect our travels one bit. I think one of the few things I checked on the Internet outside of our mail was the US dollar which rose ten-cents against the US dollar while we traveled and dropped almost ten-cents toward the end – just the opposite of which we wanted. Now it is climbing again which is great for our family coming to visit but not for any investments in Australia. Bottom line – reading books is much more entertaining and informative than television or newspapers. It is amazing how much is in the news that has no value to an individual’s life. We have been home for two days with no thoughts of putting on the television or radio. Of course without cable there is no data so that could be the reason, though we have not looked at a newspaper since being back either. All those silly people on the cover of magazines at the supermarket and all the stupid claims about those ‘celebrities’ are not worth picking up the magazines for. Perhaps I am too old but most of the people appearing in the news I have never heard of. This person getting married, another screwing someone’s partner, someone saying they are gay, and on and on. Does anyone really care? Or are people’s lives so shallow that they have to read about someone else’s?

And that is our journey so far this year.
And now we prepare for 2008.

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Olympic Park Sydney

August 17, 2007 by tneuage.

Olympic Park and what transpired there on 16 August 2003 -

Thursday, August 16, 2007 10:10 PM Olympic Park Sydney (video @ Leigh 07 )

I look first at my times at this place in the world that I always return to on 16th August:

  • 2001

January 2001. I came here from Adelaide to watch Leigh play on the U-18s Nationals. I forget which teach

South Australia was against at the time but Leigh was doing well. At one point his finger began to bleed – perhaps a cut opened – the coach wanted to take him out but after getting bandaged he was back striking out the other team. I do not even remember whether

South Australia won that game. He was a month from signing with a major league club and we were all excited. Atlanta, Cleveland, Arizona, and Los Angeles (he signed with the Dodgers in February 2001 though for several months we thought it would be with Atlanta and the year before Arizona looked the best).

  • 2003

The worse days of my life were 16 – 20 August 2003. The days before were not only the worse days of Leigh’s life but the last too. Narda and I were to leave Australia on the 18th (Monday) and after stopping in Hawaii a few days return to teaching at the University of

New York at the end of August. I was finishing my PhD and that Saturday, the 16th, unknown to me (this has been the most troubling aspect, that as a parent I did not feel anything amiss) when I was preparing to submit my thesis Leigh was already dead, having died at 5.30 am when I was asleep, totally unaware of my son’s stress. From Melbourne Sacha telephoned Narda (as the police contacted him first – what a thing to tell a twenty-two year old that his brother had just died) and she came to university to tell me. We got the next flight to

Sydney with Sacha being there an hour later and Leigh’s mother arriving the next day. The look on Leigh’s face was so filled with terror. I could not believe what his last thoughts were – except at some point in that two second fall he may have realized his mistake with no way to stop. Narda, Sacha and I spent the night of the 16th at Olympic Park looking out at the stadium that Leigh would have seen before he sat on the balcony and went backwards to the footpath below.

  • 2004

As we come to Australia for each northern summer and leave via Sydney I have a memorial each year for Leigh. The first year after his death I could not stay at the hotel and stayed in the city, taking the train to Olympic Park to light a candle and put up a memorial. It was extremely windy and the candle would not stay lit. I received an email from the police officer (Sgt. Malcom) that he had gone to the site on the day too and had seen my memorial. He said he was quite affected by Leigh’s death. We corresponded for a couple of years. I suppose anyone reading his memorial guestbook would feel something – though I have never read all the entries and may never read them - I never wrote in it either – what could I possibly say?

  • 2005

This time Narda and I stayed at the hotel on the 16th and left the next day for New York. It was windy and cold again.

  • 2006

Narda and I stayed at the hotel on the 16th and left the next day for New York. It was windy and cold again. This is not a routine – I have written these stops in previous blogs for this date.

  • 2007

This year was different in that I stayed at the hotel in Olympic Park by myself for three days. What caught my eye at the airport baggage collection point was my suitcase with my name in large texture style on the side and of course my address too. I was reminded of when my mother would put my name on everything before sending me off to camp. I suppose after being married for six years one’s wife believes that a husband needs their name in large letters on their suitcase when they go off alone. Blimey. I really had a hard time sleeping last night – the 15th. After lighting a candle on the footpath and putting up some flowers that I had picked from a nearby flowerbed (Leigh would have agreed – he once picked a bouquet of flowers for a girl friend from a flowerbed at McDonalds) I went to bed but I was awake most of the night – especially between five and six on the 16th. I am not writing about my feelings so much here. In a story I started writing on 06 July 2003 I tell more. (In 2003 I started writing a history of life with my sons, to my two boys. Narda and I were in

Frankfurt and she was catching up with past years with a friend so I started writing my story “Leaving Australia”. I did not think about it until a week later when we were in

Korea but I had started writing my life thingy on Leigh’s twentieth birthday. Because I had raised Sacha and Leigh on my own and we had a bit of a strange trot through life I thought my children would understand their lives more by reading not only what we had been through but what I had been through before becoming a single parent. Of course how would I know that Leigh would die six weeks after I started writing? I have written heaps – some 170,000 words so far – I think I am almost finished though and now my only reader will be Sacha. Of course Narda, I hope, will read it). It has been a good stay – I have had a lot of quiet reflective thoughts and I have lit my candle and walked around Olympic Park a lot. I see this whole place as a memorial to Leigh as I wrote about in last year’s blog. It is interesting in that no one else in the area would imagine such thoughts. The tourists and sports players here now are training for the Olympics in China next year. I suppose Leigh would have gone to them too. He was on the 2004 team for

Athens but instead decided to end his life in front of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Stadium.

  • 2008 +

This is my last public memorial for Leigh…

Rest In Peace that you could not find on this planet. We started on the Internet together in 1993 and on computers in 1991 and I am still on the Internet and you chose to move on. Thank you for so many years connected with me on the Internet and in Real Life. You are now so more fully connected to a new life that I can not grasp so far beyond the pains and sorrows of this life.

Leigh was quite upset with me doing webpages for him after he signed. When he was between ten and about fifteen (1993 – before the web had taken off and 1998) we made webpages together. Grief takes on so many forms, levels and colorations and for these first four years I have tried to be with Leigh through webpages. In the future I will do it within myself. Sacha is doing well; he has chosen to embrace life and I will embrace it with him. His latest album has Leigh’s baseball card as his logo with DB beneath it (Dodgy Brothers – because of the Dodgers and because dodgy is Australian slang…). I have never favoured one son but I did understand the world of baseball more than the world of hip hop so it was easier to make sense of sports but because what Leigh did is so far beyond what I am capable to comprehend I have been overwhelmed by this for the past four years. However, as I put an end to my public sharing of Leigh I will embrace all that Sacha has to offer and watch his life bloom. One thing that is for sure is that I have no interest at all in baseball – and that is after growing up with it. Actually, I have no interest in any sports. Rap music is an acquired taste for an old person and I am trying…..

How do we know when someone is so depressed that nothing will stop them from ending life? Leigh wrote a six thousand work letter to his girl friend, Veronica, who was in the quarter finals of the Australian Idol competition at the Novotel Hotel in Olympic Park. He apparently did not wait for her response as he was on a flight the same day from Dodgertown in Vero Beach, Florida to Sydney. The date on his computer for sending the letter was 13 August 2003 and from his receipts he was on a flight soon after. The return ticket was never used and I keep it framed above my desk (currently in

New York City). Veronica could have emailed me (I had said hi to her in a chatroom just a few days earlier so she knew my email – saying that I was in Adelaide at the time finishing my PhD thesis) or she could have contacted Leigh’s mother in

Adelaide. She did nothing and Leigh spent the day of the fifteenth with Veronica.last meal with Veronicalast meal Sydney Harbour 15 August (with Veronica)

She was staying at the Novotel and Leigh requested a room on the top floor with a balcony. She said he was very unresponsive all day and with him to get them a suite with a balcony after knowing about his email to her she should have been concerned. I have not had contact with her since Leigh’s funeral and I never will. Even though she was but a teenager herself (18 or 19 at the time) she could may have been able to prevent this loss. Maybe I am the only who feels that my life ended when Leigh hit the pavement.

Leigh’s writings are too private but to quote a small portion of his letter showing his intentions is enough never to heal the pain

part of what he wrote “……it is inevitable that one day I will kill myself.…I figured I would jump off the bridge. You know the bridge, that goes over the island. That would kill me. At this point, it is still in my head, and I know if something drastic happens, that that is where you’ll be able to find me, floating in that river. But I’m not obsessing over it non-stop like I was a couple of days ago. So anyway, I was on my way out of the door and it literally started just absolutely pouring. It’s been raining a lot lately, just out of nowhere. It’ll be all sunny one minute and then there will be a huge storm. Anyway, the bridge is a damn long way away, and I really didn’t want to walk there in a storm. I actually thought that my walk to the bridge would be a really nice peaceful time for me, alone with my thoughts and preparing myself to die. Anyway, I tried to tell myself that it might be a sign, that there might be more reason to hold on. I took off my shoes and got into bed. This is the day that I stayed in bed all day long. When I finally got out of bed, I didn’t have the same urge to die. I didn’t NEED to do it right that second. And then we spoke shortly after that. And that’s where I’m at right now in the evolution of depressiveness in my head throughout my life. About the obsessions, I’m haven’t started to think about when that came about. All I’ve thought about so far is why I have this desire to kill myself and why I still think that eventually I will. …”

“…I remember spending so long staring off my balcony at the concrete, wondering if I landed squarely on my head if I would die (I doubt it, it wasn’t very high) But still, even so, it was never so bad that I had to consciously hold myself back from doing it. Until this week. This week, at so many moments, if I could have ended it right away, I would have. ..”

Leigh’s ticket to Sydney Leigh’s ticket to Sydney - the other portion - the return ticket is on my desk at my current home in Brooklyn NY.

One of Leigh’s friends in Florida, Amy, continued writing him after he died. She did not know until she saw a memorial webpage when she Googled “Leigh Neuage” that he was no longer here. Of the many emails in his Hotmail account there were these (Amy told me his password so that I could read his account):

From : Amy … <… @hotmail.com>
Sent : Sunday, August 17, 2003 7:35 PM
To : “Leigh Neuage” <lskdodger@msn.com>

How are you?Just wondering how life has been treating you…Amy

From : Amy … <…@hotmail.com>
Sent : Sunday, August 24, 2003 12:28 AM
To : llskdodger@msn.com

Leigh -
Where have you been?
Is everything ok?
Amy

From : Amy … <…@hotmail.com>
Sent : Friday, August 29, 2003 8:34 PM
To : “Leigh Neuage” <lskdodger@msn.com>

Leigh, Where are you? Are you even here anymore? I haven’t heard from you in a long time. What’s up?Just started school. Amy

From : Amy … <…@hotmail.com>
Sent : Thursday, September 11, 2003 2:22 AM
To : “Leigh Neuage” <lskdodger@msn.com>

Leigh, Are you mad at me? Why are you not responding to my e-mails?Amy

From : Amy … <…@hotmail.com>
Sent : Thursday, September 18, 2003 3:11 AM
To : lskdodger@msn.com

Are you no longer speaking to me

Leigh’s last photo

Figure 2 self portrait - last photo on Leigh’s camera

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August 17, 2007 by tneuage.

mobile blog 17 August 2007mobile blog 17 August 2007

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Cambodia

July 15, 2007 by tneuage.

Phnom Penh
Wow! That about sums up my thoughts of Phnom Penh. Such contrasts. Our taxi driver to the airport said the average wage is $50 (US – they favour the American dollar and almost everything is priced in US dollars, which of course makes being here a bit expensive after Thailand and Viet Nam). We read in our guidebook that giving someone a dollar for a tip equals their daily wage – our hotel room costs a local a month’s labour. This is much better than Thailand. We spoke to a man trying to sell me a tailored made suit who said that the hotel we were staying at was too luxurious for him as it would cost him a week’s wage. I always thought we were a bit poor, I suppose by Manhattan standards we are but we own a couple of houses and a car so in local terms we are doing OK.
The people are incredibly friendly which of course the Thai and the Vietnamese are too. Considering not too long ago this place was in ruin it is quite amazing they have accomplished what they have. During the Poi Pot years of Kmeher Rouge era the city was diminished from a population of half a million to some fifty-thousand, now there are more than three-million.
We avoided seeing the museums “the Killing Fields” and there was another one full of torture memorabilia, which we did not have the stomach to see. I do want to read about it all though, and we bought a couple of books, photocopied ones, from a street seller. The first night I felt a bit spooked in the hotel room, hearing every noise. I guess it was from thinking about the incredible history of the massacres of the 70’s.
But the next morning that feeling was gone. As Terrell said, folks are friendly. The city reminds me more of India. It is much more underdeveloped than the other Asian cities we have seen. Some of the city roads are dirt roads, but many of them have been nicely paved,  and landscaped, courtesy of foreign gifts (Japan, Canada, were some of the signs we saw; I’m sure there were many more). The river has many nice cafes and great food. My fears of diarrhoea (I can finally spell it!!..though Bill Gates is telling me otherwise) have been unfounded (not to go into too much detail) the only brush with the ‘runs’ was, of all places, in Holland.
The Hotel pavilion has a lovely pool, which we used, as it is bloody hot here!
So after 3 days we took a local flight to Siem Reap.
My word, this is an amazing place. It has a downtown café area, lots of bars eateries clubs, lots and lots of tourists. On our drive into town we passed so many HUGE hotels, we thought we were in Vegas. No kidding! The place is a boom town. As the guide book says, they have to be careful it doesn’t become awful.We have guest house accommodation, just up from backpackers, but at $20 per night it’s good. It’s a traditional Cambodian house, with lots of dark wood. Our room is all wood, even the cupboards are made of slats of bamboo. The owners live right next door I think. They are most helpful and friendly. Luckily the room has aircon. I hate to sound like a wuss but we really need it. If we thought Phom Pehn was hot, this place is hotter.
Yesterday we asked the tuk-tuk guy from the hotel to take us for a drive anywhere, not  to tourist places. It was very interesting. One road was flooded so we had to turn back. At another place, in town we found a bike shop and bought two baskets for our bikes in Brooklyn. We were checking out the baskets in Utrecht too (they were 15 Euros, these were $1.50) I wanted to buy a bike too, but Terrell had some concerns about luggage.
And of course we have been to Ankor Wat. It’s a huge national park, with miles and miles of roads leading to many ancient temple ruins, dating back to 850-1200 AD. Pretty cool. 

 

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Chiang Mai

July 4, 2007 by tneuage.

Chiang Mai
See http://thailand.ournews.mobi (photos/video) youtube is blocked in Thailand - the bandwidth in Cambodia is not enough to upload videos and photos so they will be done when we get to Australia in ten days. This is our blog for Chiang Mai.

Riding the bus to Chiang Rai (Chiang means city). This is a luxury bus and very comfortable. Even has a hostess who handed out a large pack of Oreo cookies (Super Chockio) to each of us, It is a three-hour trip through the mountains which are lush and tropical. Narda is reading a book on Cambodia and is on the health section which is listing the vaccinations one should have before entering the country – oh dear, we should have read that section before leaving Europe. So if come back to Australia with lots of weird fungus and spots on our face it is probably from petting the local chooks – or is that Asian Flu? We also just learned (or I did through Narda’s reading - I only read the sections on tipping and temples and etc.) that we need to get stool checks as soon as we get to Australia to see if we have worms – kool. And there is the section on mosquitoes describing all the nasty things one gets from those little wonderful God’s creatures great and small.Chiang Mai was awesome as a young person would say – we old people just say ‘kool’. The highlight was riding an elephant. I forgot our elephant’s name – perhaps Narda will remember in her section. It was a she and an adolescent (fifteen-years old according to our guide) and too young to be pregnant – she had a bit of an adolescent swagger to her – passing the older elephants. She was quite demanding wanting sugar cane (Narda was worried about her adolescent teeth) and bananas. It is an expensive setup – every so often (too often) there are stands some ten feet off of the ground selling bananas and sugar cane for 30-bahts each (close to a dollar each) and anyone who has hung around with an adolescent elephant would know they are always hungry. We managed to get away with buying only six batches on our one hour journey.elephant artist elephant painting picture of another elephant, elephant crossing river crossoing

The ride was as good as any carnival ride. Going down a mountain side one could easily think they would fall off and our elephant, being young, did the walk a bit too fast as she rushed toward the river that we crossed to climb to the next food stall which of course she had no problem stopping at.We saw an elephant show where the elephants painted pictures of elephants – we are not sure how they did it but Narda thinks their guides pulled their ear to guide them – see our video – though not on youtube which the Thailand government has blocked along with other sites to protect the morals of the Thai people.

We had about an hour ride on a bamboo raft, visited an orchard farm and that was our day in Chiangmai. We went shopping in the evening to add to our clothing collection that we began in Scotland. Our new large suitcase that we bought a week ago in Scotland is so full that we are stuffing our carry-on bags with new crap. Sunday, July 01, 2007

I think the elephant ride has been a highlight of the trip for me. I just loved it. We were a little dubious abut it at first, thinking that the elephants were probably mistreated to get them to perform tricks for us, but we really did not see that. Which of course does not mean that it does not happen. I guess there must be some pretty powerful incentives for those huge creatures to dance, bow, drag stuff, paint pictures with a brush held it their trunk, and even play harmonicas…and then carry us heavy western passengers up steep mountain paths, and across rivers. But I can see how you can really get into elephant conservation. They are so majestic.
Chiang Mai is a city where I think I could live awhile. Terrell says I say that about most places, but I’m sure this is not true! It has nice leafy streets, though we both got scratchy throats from the pollution. The food was good too. I had travellers’ diarrhea in Holland, but now, touch wood, it’s gone. And I’m so into Dutch food.
So here we sit, bus business class on the road to Chiang Rai. Might take a nap, it’s 3 hours.

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Scotland 2007

July 4, 2007 by tneuage.

See photos at
http://scotland.ournews.mobi/photos/index.htm We are unable to put up our videos now as we are in Cambodia and there is not enough band width. The same when we were in Thailand - by the way Thailand blocks youtube.
Here we are, summer 06/07, finally’ out the door’ again. There was a delay leaving because of thunder storms. When we arrived in Frankfurt, there were major delays for many people, and as a result the airport was pretty chaotic. Luckily we had boarding passes to Edinburgh and our next flight was also delayed. But here’s our first big adventure! Our luggage did not arrive. Nor did it the next day…so…life is hard…we had to buy a whole new wardrobe. The airline promised to pay half (and all toiletries) and we discovered some really cool stuff in Scottish shops. So now I have a new colour scheme with lots of brown. Brown is the new black so they say. I feel so very trendy. Terrell looks a treat, in navy, with splashes of red. Hmm …might even go out with him!
Anyway, I can’t really keep writing about our new clothes. We did do some good touristy stuff. Checked out the odd castle, stayed at lovely B‘nBs. The road led us north to Findhorn, a little village way up there. It was misty all the time, but hey, this is Scotland, and we enjoyed the reprieve from the hot humid weather in NY. My favourite meal was in Edinburgh, tomato soup with coconut, so salty and so yummy! Findhorn is where the old hippies live, but Terrell will have more to say about that. Driving across the top there, we turned left at Inverness and followed the Loch Ness. Beautiful scenery! As we came further south past Fort William the scenery dramatically changed to huge mountains with big sweeping valleys, no tree, .very stark. Impossible to describe and quite breathtaking. So here we are at Arvorlich House on the shores of Loch Lomond, having a lovely rest. We decided on 2 nights, so today is ‘down time’, with a million dollar view of a mountain and a lake.

Rarely being in a shopping mood – whatever is on the floor of the closet is the right thing to wear for the day – I found a surprising aspect of my personality that either was repressed or was there all along but had yet to find the time to come out and play – the shopper within.

When we discovered the airlines had separated our unfortunate luggage from its cheerful owners (us) whilst we were dressed for the 90-degree weather in New York City and it was rainy and quite cold in Edinburgh we had no choice but to liberate clothing from their imprisonment at the local shopping centre. Many times in my repressed shopping past, Narda would say I should buy a new pair of this or a quad of that or whatever but I would just reply that I was not in a shopping mood and the clothing would stay on the rack. Edinburgh was different – there is a shopping aura that quickly and firmly drew me in – it was almost spiritual. A new sports coat (within 45 seconds of being in the store I felt the draw to the rack of coats), then socks, various under garments – even pajamas – something I never would buy (Narda had bought me some in some desperate and hopeful fantasy of a well trained and civilized husband but I had never worn them).

Our first night in Edinburgh was interesting in that we stayed at such a typical Scottish bed and breakfast. A stocky shortish couple with such a strong accent I seldom understood a word they said so I agreed with everything they uttered. We had a great breakfast and the host walked us to the door and wished us a safe journey. We found the Scots so friendly and hospitable everywhere we went – such a change from the rude and pushy people in New York City. I never did quite get to understand much of what was said. One shop (we sort of shopped our way across Scotland due to the lostness of our baggage.) the check out chick (I was told in New York that was a sexist line but we are in Scotland so I assume it is OK here) was asking if I wanted a bag and she must have said it four or five times. I thought she was asking if I wanted to go to the bar – which with a wife next to me I thought was strange. I had read in some tabloid or was it one of the racy telly shows that I once saw? that there were some kinky going ons in the British Island but… eventually Narda enlightened me that she was saying ‘bag’ and not bar. She had asked if I wanted our stuff put in a bag not whether I wanted to go to a bar. Gosh!

After leaving Edinburgh we rambled through various towns in the central of Scotland. At the northern point we stopped in at the Findhorn Foundation in Findhorn. I was on my way to Findhorn at the end of the 1960s. At the time I was in some cult Order in Hawaii when I was hearing about this spiritual place in the North of Scotland and that it was the next great place to go after the hippie migration to India to find one’s guru. But somehow I ended up in other places on the mainland (Cheyenne Wyoming, Wichita Kansas, Detroit Michigan, Syracuse New York, Baltimore Maryland, then to Australia for the next twenty-two years) and it was not until the mid-1980’s that I heard of Findhorn again. At the time I was making tofu in Adelaide and I rented out the front of my tofu factory to a couple (both named Robin – one was a male) who had met at Findhorn at the end of the 1970’s. They were into one of those religious cults, the Church Universal and Triumphant (Summit Lighthouse) of Elizabeth Clare Prophet. It was even more nuts than the Order that I had been in. Reading something I wrote about Findhorn at that time made me want to visit the place if I ever got to Findhorn:
“Looking up today’s community news on the Internet for Findhorn we read that,
“Crystal the Cat moves Into the Light: Many of us mourn Eileen’s cat Crystal who died earlier this week.” [13 Feb 2004].
That just about sums up my knowledge of the place, something about animals and humans and all entering into the light.“Findhorn

view from opur bed and breakfastView from Ardvorlich House B & B at Loch Lomond
Well here we were at the Findhorn Foundation. There is a community here – it was like a retirement village for hippies – lots of self built houses, a bit of a hippie ghetto and they make their money off of running spiritual guidance courses. Narda bought an expensive dress at their shop that we hope the airlines will pay for as they lost our bags for a week. I looked at their books; the same books I use to purchase decades ago on astrology and reincarnation and enlightenment and yes there was a book on cats, something about how to communicate with your cat on a spiritual level. It was when I was reading about channeling a cat that I realized I had changed and these people had not. We stayed at a very nice bed and breakfast, went to a near by town and bought some more clothes and a suitcase to put all our new stuff in.

The next day, Saturday 24 June, we drove through Inverness where I bought a red jumper with Shetland ponies on it (see photo of horses on a red background somewhere in this blog). The jumper gets added to our list of clothes bought because Lufthansa did not get our bags to us and we are in Scotland where it is bloody cold and raining all the time. This will surely test my macho self-image I have but then again who notices an aging person these days anyway?

We drove around Loch Ness and past all the trashy shops selling monster images and to our next bed and breakfast place on Loch Lomond (see photo below or next or somewhere near these words taken from the front porch).

Loch Shira at Inveraray
We went to the Inverary Castle.
The significance of this place is that I got my first senior discount by saying I was 60. The person at the counter did not believe me so I showed my drivers license which showed I was born in 1947 – I put my thumb over the month as I am not really 60 for another six weeks. We learned something about Dukes as the 14th Duke of Argyll lives with his new wife and some babies – they let us tourists in to raise funds to mow their huge lawns and clean their vast castle.

We got our rental car back to the airport with three miles left of petrol in the tank. We had paid for a full tank and we believed we had given enough money to the rental people already. We recovered our two lost suitcases at the airport and now we have a third suitcase full of new clothes, perfumes, facial scrubs and all the things one would need on their journey when the airlines misplaces suitcases for a few days.

The plane was late as has been our experience all along the way and when we got to Frankfurt for our connection to Amsterdam we missed that connection. Ms. Gabriel, the mean lady at the Lufthansa counter said we should have made the flight and would not put us on the next flight. She told us to go buy a new ticket. We already had been quite upset with Lufthansa for losing our bags and now Gabriel (not related to the archangel that we know of) was giving us stress. We went to another counter and a very nice woman, who incidentally was from New Jersey, had married a German, who had left her for another woman – the things one learns at an airlines ticket counter – was a bit upset with Lufthansa (she said the company “operated like a plumber sent to a job without a wrench” and got us on to the next flight which got us to Amsterdam and we took the train to Utrecht which stopped somewhere in the middle of Holland for half an hour because something was in the tracks and we got to Rienk’s house at about one am – some five hours late. Rink waited up for us and now, Tuesday morning, we are looking forward to riding bikes around Utrecht for the next couple of days. This is our fifth year in a row that we have stopped here. The main two differences is that it is cold and raining (just like Scotland) and usually it is very hot and the Internet café I always use is closed down so I may not be able to post this until we get to Australia in two weeks.

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All my dead family and friends keep asking me for favours

February 4, 2007 by tneuage.

All my dead family and friends keep asking me
for favours
Last night one of my dead girl friends
asked me to feed her dead cat.
            8-25-94 Victor Harbor South Australia

We buried my father. The family is dying away. Thinking about the death toll; it is only natural, we all do it, I am just running out of family members.

The immediate family dead list:

  • Mum number one died 1974 – she had put me up for adoption in 1950 when I was barely three so I never got to know her,
  • Mum number two – the adopted one – she wandered on in 1991,
  • Brother, Robert Adsit, (http://neuage.indiko.com/robert_adsit.htm) adopted at that, but we had our times together for four decades – he couldn’t sustain the AIDS virus and gave in to it early 1992. I was home with Leigh in South Australia when my dad rang from New York – Leigh was ten and as I consumed a 4-litre cask of wine and shot hoops in the backyard I told Leigh all the great times I had with my brother and bad times too,
  • Leigh (http://neuage.org/leigh.htm) died soon after turning twenty. Playing for the LA Dodgers farm club in Florida and then he suddenly flew to Sydney to say goodbye to his girlfriend of four years who had just broken up with him whilst she was in the quarter finals of the Australian Idol thingy – Leigh went off his fifteenth floor balcony – I will never get over that,
  • Dad – adopted me in 1950 and even though I left home at age 16 and caused him grief many times over we had our off and on times; when he came to Australia in 1992, age 87, Leigh, Sacha and I got a big campervan and drove around Australia with him – that was really kool. Sacha was eleven and Leigh was nine. Narda and I moved to New York in 2002 to look after him as he was living alone and at the age of 97 was a bit tired. He kept on going strong until last week when he just decided to die – we spent an hour with him the night he left. He did open his eyes and look at us. He made it to 101 and nine months.

Funny thing is that my maternal grandmother is still alive at age 98. She was the one who pushed for my mum to put me up for adoption so I have pretty much ignored her. I even found that I had a blood related sister and brother, both whom I have visited. My brother I visited in Hawaii in 2002 and my sister lives a couple of hours away in the middle of NY. I have contact with her off and on and have seen her four times.

 
And that is my life.

I have been writing it “Leaving Australia” for the past few years – 311,246 words so far and I am only up to 2001. Part three – Leigh’s death I have been putting off for way too long. Some day I will finish it then burn the whole bloody thing – maybe even bury it with Leigh’s ashes. http://neuage.indiko.com/saint.htm

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