on my way home..

So in the end I learned there are indeed far too many human beings on the planet, but not including, dear reader, either you or me. In a little park I visited during a lunch-time walk in Seoul, there were many schools sharing corners of open space with one another, and the pigeons. The children amused themselves greatly by taking the normal level of pigeon-human harassment and reversing it, although one did avenge itself and its fellows by a nicely targeted top-of-the-head splat.



I learned that of the many forms of spoken English, mine is an obscure and often unintelligible one to our cousins across the Pacific. I also learned that the Australian use of irony increases misunderstanding times the percentage already created by our accent.


I learned that the stock has places for locking up legs, the pillory is for arms, and that wherever you are on the planet and whatever time of day or night it is, Dr Phil is there too, demonstrating the modern-day equivalent for his viewers, the unsleeping jetlagged among them. American television is astonishingly 'unprivate'.



I learned that when your hotel Internet access seems to have failed, think like a librarian, climb under the desk and plug the network cable into your laptop. I also learned that wherever you are, there might wifi be, except in those places which advertise providing it like VIA Rail Canada.



I learned that mastering bathroom engineering across the globe is as challenging to the modern-day traveller as getting hold of money in a foreign country used to be. The one below offers a steam sauna option. If only I could read the Korean instructions on the wall.



I learned that anyone offering any kind of service in an airport or train station has a metaphorical hand already outstretched for the tip. I also learned that this goes for EVERY service offered by a Hotel chain, and that the equal and opposite is true of Mum and Dad outfits. But isn't tipping just one of the last remnants of feudalism, with no place in a properly managed economy?


Most of all I learned, yet again, how much fun it is to head off into the world, pocket camera and bank notes at the ready.

GIBSON HOUSE - Toronto. This woman was dressed for the Rebels Dinner that night, and neglected to invite me! The house was a beautiful American-Georgian building, both fascinating and appalling. People slept propped up on their straw beds, presumably hoping to overcome nightly the asthmatic effort of breathing in straw dust. And the wife of the house shared it with the farm manager who had his own attic, carefully locked off from the woman folk at night.

GREENWICH VILLAGE - I was tempted to have my fortune told by 'Zena' until I caught a glimpse of her through her prominent shop front. Shortly thereafter a man I photographed in Washington Square filled me in quite succinctly in any case, with two words.

The very grand GRAND CENTRAL STATION - rescued from demolition by, inter alia, Hillary Clinton and perhaps reason enough to hope she becomes 44th Prez. Consider the fate of Penn Station, main entry and exit point to NY for those of us fond of train travel, a station once built on a scale to rival Grand Central, but its replacement version as nondescript as a public rest room. There's also the curious shambles involved in actually getting on the right train at Penn. Important travel information is suddenly unveiled by last-minute disclosure of the Track allocation. While waiting, along with the hundreds of other travellers in the same jostling predicament, there's nowhere to sit, and no indication of which track your train might be leaving from. Prue and I discussed mastering this process. Her assessment was that even in running shoes, and ready to spring down the stairs the minute the track numbers began to spin, one would always be shouldered aside by a stiletto-wearing woman in leopard print pants. So I had no chance.

And of course I re-learned how extremely nice it is to be heading back home again.

Stradbroke Island, last Christmas (thank you Elizabeth).

Stockyards in Purga, outside Ipswich.