Canberra

On 2nd February I returned to Canberra for a month, to count my children, sort out my finances, write some papers and try to work out what I was going to do with the rest of the year, or indeed the rest of my life. I stayed with the extremely lovely Philip and Iris, and their gorgeous son Jeffery, aged 10 months. My room faced the road where extraordinarily loud roadworks began every morning at 7am. I am convinced that Philip and Iris put me in that room to ensure that I did not overstay my welcome. The photo shows me with baby Jeffery standing near one of the wretched machines that disturbed my slumber. Jeffery is extremely cute and my plan had been to smuggle him with me in my cabin baggage when I left, but sadly I discovered that he weighed 7.2kg, which is over the limit, so I had to leave him behind. I spent many happy evenings with Philip arguing about whether or not all Christians had to be pacifists all the time (him - yes, me - no) and whether eating camembert at room temperature made me more bourgeois than him.


I spent time with my wonderful daughters Lyndal, Michaela and Elwyn and was delighted to have the opportunity of watching the latter two play baseball. Their team is coached by a former professional baseball player who has played in the US, and they thrashed their opponents comprehensively. Whether it was the outstanding coaching, or the running skills developed by the team during the soccer season, we will never know. The photo (right) shows Elwyn and Michaela enjoying sisterly love. Well, maybe Michaela is enjoying it! The photo below shows Elwyn having more fun.


Since my academic career, if I ever have one, will depend on publications, I spent many hours writing papers for peer-reviewed journal articles. To date, only one has actually been published but the others are due out this year. Hopefully, in the academic world there will be many references to Day (2011) in years to come. Sigh.

I spent an enjoyable weekend in Melbourne with my extended family, including numerous cousins of varying degrees. It was also very special to meet Bailey again. Bailey is a labrador who had been our family pet for the first five years of her life, when we gave her to my cousin Rachel, who offered a home with many children and loads more attention than she received at our place. Bailey, who was named after an ancestor that went down on the Titanic, had a much happier life journey than her namesake and looked fat and contented, as labradors should be.

Then there was a franctic round of paperwork to deal with. I applied for, and received, my new tourist visa for India and also applied for a Person of Indian Origin (PIO) card. If I'm succesful, I will be entitled to bypass all the visa requirements for India in the future. I also examined my PhD carefully and discovered that it was wrong - my discipline was Biological Anthropology, not AnthropologyAnthropology [sic]. I began the tedious process of getting that fixed.

I had many meals with my daughters, drinks with friends, meetings with bank managers and chats with bureaucrats of every kind. I officiated at Elwyn's school swimming carnival, helped move Michaela into her father's garage, dumped my excess possessions into storage and bought new underwear to replace all that had been destroyed by being smashed against rocks in laundries throughout Asia. Then it was time to leave. I promised to write more often and update my blog regularly. OK, the latter turned out to be a lie.

On 3rd March, I headed to Bangkok, en routte to India, for Round 2.