travels of discovery

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

* (June - August 08) Summer trip (Poland/Italy/Singapore/Australia:Adelaide Hills Football, Lochiel Park, Glenelg, Melbourne)
* (November) Thanksgiving (Chattanooga)
* (December) Winter Break - December 20th NYC > Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide > Shanghai China (December 31, 2008 - January 04, 2009) > NYC

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

Wheal Hughes Copper Mine, Moonta, South Australia August 14, 2008 from http://ournews.mobi
more clips from Terrell Neuage (http://neuage.org) at http://ournews.mobi/album.htm

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.

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 (http://07.ournews.mobi/), 06 (http://neuage.org/06trip.htm) and before and photo albums (http://ournews.mobi/album.htm) that are slideshows and etc. http://photos.ournews.mobi/

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. http://08.ournews.mobi/

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

Blog along the way

Scotland (see http://scotland.ournews.mobi for photos and videos)

Monday, June 25, 2007
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.


Brodie Castle


Loch Lomond
Findhorn phone/email box

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.“


View 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 Invearay 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 that 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 Rink’s house at about one am – some five hours late. Rienk 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 four weeks.

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

Just read that Qantas may be taken over by Macquarie Bank Ltd. So having been victims of the lost New Zealand frequent flyer points when they gave Australia the slip a few years ago we, with little hesitation, booked a flight to Mexico City for spring break - end of March and first week April. So 2007 will be a big travel year, http://our-news.mobi

Of course, The Age (Australian news) today reports that Qantas is claiming that the frequent miles will be safe but we heard that when Westpac said some similar thing only to cut their points in half.

Not to worry we will take our points and run. Hello Mexico. Our goal will be to make this a totally free trip - well there is the $64 airport taxes and charges but otherwise the ticket is free. Our next goal is to swap houses in Mexico for a week with our apartment here in Brooklyn. Though most likely we will fly over to San Pedro, Guatemala (San Pedro: Guatemala's Bohemian Stronghold) and see my friend Dell - my friend from the 1960s who has finished building his house over looking Lake Atitlan.

the differences a year brings. last year we went to Paris for Christmas this year I will spend Christmas with eveyone - sort of - Narda and I will be in flight somewhere over the Pacific, arriving Sydney at 9.30 am. Narda will go off to Adelaide and I am going to Homebush to light a candle for Leigh then in the afternoon to Melbourne to have Christmas pm with Sacha.

Last year we were settled into our 4-bedroom victorian in Round Lake and this year we are settled into our small 1 bedroom apartment in Brooklyn.

And I am doing this blog on my cell phone - t-mobile MDA, now I am online 24/7 anywhere - well except for the subway when they are underground