Posted from  Qantas Lounge, Sydney Airport  9:30AM Sunday

Happy Australia Day. We are in an airport lounge and will unfortunately miss the festivities of the day. One thing is certain these people like to have fun. The landscape is dotted with hundreds of sailboats on Sydney Harbor. The wharves and quays were jammed pack for our last night in town. To add to the mayhem the Chinese New Year is coincidental. 

Since we last chatted we have gone from Polynesian to urban stops in New Caledonia, Brisbane and Sidney to round up this crazy sojourn. There is an incredible spirit from “have a go at it mate” to a casual genteel. They strive for unanimity much the same as the UK. On the street you can hear a variety of languages as well as dialects within. 

While spending three days here we saw at least five different cruise ships pull in at 8:00 AM  and depart at 6:00PM. Doesn’t seem like a fair shake but the show must go on. A Norwegian Cruise Line behemoth was a sight to see and I am not sure if it was pretty one. A quick glance told you the guests on board numbered well over 5,000. We had 500. They descend on the city like locusts, a ripe prey for the hawkers of all sorts. 

This is an outdoor city from the business side to the waterside. There are a raft of outdoor cafes serving anything from coffee to oysters and suds. Semi permanent umbrellas shield you from the sun or an occasional shower. The inside meets the outside. We had wait staff from Brazil, Italy, France and Columbia to name a few. All had their reasons. Most were here to stay. 

Brisbane was a gem in its own right. About ten miles upriver from the Jasmine Sea this metropolis has taken itself seriously over the last twenty years and transformed  into a bustling mixture of downtown commerce to the Miami Beach style of The Gold Coast. It seems they make quick work of things and are not bogged down by bureaucracy.

The brush fires have done damage to their land and their psyches. There are fingers of blame but you can’t fight Mother Nature. We woke up on Thursday to the faint smell of smoke but curiously it ebbed and then returned as the wind changed directions. Tour guides pleaded with us to tell everyone they are alive and well..and open for business. They are. The damage to wildlife is enormous with almost a billion lost. That’s right, a billion !

All of these cities are whistle clean. It is a relatively young country and they respect and take seriously their environs. The real estate is ridiculously expensive and you wonder how there are so many who can afford it. Ditto the yachts. One is larger than the other whether sail or power. The one difference is they seem to enjoy it rather than flaunt it. 

It has been great to be “Down Under” for so long. Yes kids there is life outside the US. That is not to put us Yanks down but to say we really aren’t the cat’s meow all the time. I keep thinking this confluence of cultures is really good. Everyone has something to offer. The sports are pervasive but it seems to be more about team than superstar. 

I could go on for too many pages. Suffice to say Kathy and I are pretty lucky to have been here and to have had each other for 49 years. We celebrated our anniversary Thursday night. We are lucky to be not only citizens of the US but of the world with all its foibles and follies. Wherever you are just pinch yourself. Say thanks to whomever you praise. Good on ya !

As always 

Ted the Great 

I am sitting on the deck of the good ship Lollipop somewhere in New Caledonia, formerly French Polynesia. It is a quiet bay with the bluest of water and an occasional edifice of some sort dots the landscape. I am not sure of our lats and longs and to be honest it is not a concern 

 We were not welcome in our original port of call. This was not because they didn’t want our sheckels and boundless buying power  but because the big chief of the island died and they were in a fourteen day period of mourning. Nothing commercial transpires during that time. Can you see Amazon or Target doing that if Trump or Pelosi or even Bezos passed?

Going ashore on a tender, Kathy and I made our way up to a main road. We espied a church as we entered the harbor and wanted to hike up to see it. The road was well paved but very few people in sight. The foliage on either side was dense but forgiving. It is totally unlike anything we have seen so far. This was the South Pacific we had imagined but not yet experienced. 

All of these island nations have one thing in common. They are not one but dozens if not hundreds of isles and atolls under some sort of confederation. Either by location or size there is the main spot or city and their freeways that connect are the myriad of waterways surrounding them. 

The cities differ drastically from  Hawaii’s  Honolulu and Hilo or the Caribbean Nassau and St Barts. They are gritty with commerce and haphazard growth. When examined closely the lush sub tropical landscape yields minimal housing with open air and doors to facilitate circulation. No electricity or running water is evident. 

We visited one of these villages in Fiji. The residents numbering 500, greeted us with song and dance. The locale was ruled by a chief and he had the biggest house. Of course there was a church. The islands are predominantly Christian and they practice their faith. 

All the residents of each country  are a gentle and welcoming people. They share everything amongst themselves. The doors are always open and if you happen by you are invited in for a meal. To not do so would be an affront. They love music that is both tribal and rasto. Guitars and ukuleles abound as well as ready made drums on bottoms of pails or maracas fashioned from a pop bottle and sand. 

Their main occupation is tourism and the minimum wage if available is $2.35 per hour. Sure we have snorkeled and swam and gone here and there but that visit was a good dose of reality. They are descendants of families going back millennia yet they have kept together and found tranquility in community. We could all learn a lot. 

Interestingly the fanciest buildings are embassies with Australia, India and the United Staes being noteworthy. There should be no doubt the Chinese are there and more are coming. Not with throngs of tourists but investing and lending at a breakneck pace. Their largesse as part of the Belt and Road leaves no doubt of their long term plan. All nations are jockeying for position for trade and politics.

Being islands, everything comes in by boat and container. When someone in a roadside stand offers you a Coke or a Twinkee you can’t imagine the circuitous route it has taken and number of hands it has passed through. Commerce at its best and worst.

These islands need help to prosper or even in some cases to survive.. From repairing roads to building schools. Yesterday in Vanuatu our guide on a couple of miles hike to a waterfalls told us he does it twice a day 6 days a week to try to send his kids to school. The cost of tuition is $300 per child. 45% of the kids do not attend.

The trip is wonderful but sobering if you look beneath the covers. All these people live in Paradise and swim and dance and sing. That is their way of life.Part of you says how can we help and the other part says be careful what you wish for. Success ain’t always what it is cracked up to be. The kids are happy and incredibly well behaved. Should we leave it just at that?

In an incredible clash of cultures I am reading Homo Deus by Yuval Harari while on this trip. He describes a future that is sterile and barren. He speaks of how pleasure is fleeting and how we all just want a bigger hit of this or that. We want it all. Somewhere in between AI and these Pacific oases there has got to be a happy medium. I will let you know if I find it.

Kathy and I made it up that hill to the church. It was simple but elegant. It was a labor of love by those who built it. The patio overlooked the Pacific and our ship below.What a picture What a memory.

As always

Ted The Great

Factoids:

There are 20 million 20 foot containers in the world today. Only 6 million are in transit at any given point In time. There are some behemoth ships that can carry 21,000 of them. 

There was a ship called the Happy Giant which displaced 660,000 tons full loaded. It was the length of more the three football fields and if stood on need would be taller than the Empire State building. A few years ago it was sold for scrap and beached in India to be torn apart. 

Trade Deals…Of the top ten container ports China has seven. The leader, Shanghai handles 42 million containers a year. Our largest are Los Angeles at 9 million and Port of New York at 7 million.

There are 54,000 ships in the merchant fleet throughout the world. There are 314 ocean liners with a total capacity of  537,000 passengers. There are 26 million people who cruise every year. The largest is the Symphony of the Seas with a capacity of 6687 and 2200 crew.

Posted: 200 Nautical Miles From Samoa

The Bucket List is getting shorter. We have been to a number of fantastic places worldwide. Right now we are in Oceania in the South Pacific and and traveling some 4000 miles from Tahiti to Sydney on the good ship, Seven Seas Navigator. That is more than the transcontinental distance across the United States.  

If you ever want to feel insignificant, sail for two days without seeing anything nature or man made. There is a vastness in these perfectly blue waters that defies definition. You have the magic of the internet but you are 5-6 hours behind the rest of the madding crowd. I went to grab a transmitted copy of the Wall Street journal the other day and someone exclaimed it was yesterday’s !  Think about that. Who really cares?

Of course you can eat and drink yourself to ruin if you try but there is more than that here. I listened to a talk by a professor about the origins of Polynesia both from a geologic as well as cultural point of view. It seems these islands sprang in volcanic fury from the floor of the ocean and then that displacement created barrier reefs. Ironically over the millennia the tower of Bora Bora will sink into the ocean creating an atoll. Not global warming but Mother Nature down in the engine room cooking up another curve ball for humanity. Don’t mess with her. 

On the cultural side, this is all part of an unending migration that began in Africa 130,000 years ago and has wended it way East and West and North and South in man’s quest for sustenance and wealth. This particular tributary of exploration originated in central Asia exploding onto Taiwan, the Philippines, Borneo and then to Polynesia. From there it moved to Hawaii and Easter Island. 

The speed and extent of this was bound by technology of a sort. They had to build better boats, sail material and most of all mastering how to navigate into the wind. It is said that the change of direction in the trade winds over hundreds if not thousands of years brought new frontiers to be conquered and challenges to be met. I hope this does not sound too wacky but without the blare of news and far from the shenanigans of the titans of countries and industry, you get a totally different sense of what life is all about. 

It is a bit sad to think about this paradise being center stage on the theater of colonization. Let’s just say you are fat dumb and happy on Tahiti or Bora Bora and this dude comes in on his sailing ship and claims your land for the king or queen of England or Spain or whatever. He will trade you wampum or better yet weapons so you can come into the real world. He will bring some diseases you have never heard of. You aren’t even who you think you are because you are now known as Queenstown or New Caledonia. What were you thinking? 

It gets better. You are now part of an empire and must defend it from other thieves. We are going to build fortifications, bring troops and maybe even commandeer you. Lastly we are going to bring in missionaries to make all this legal. You are getting screwed but you can go to church on Sunday and thank God for it.  

The Dutch but especially the French, Spaniards, and Great Britain had it nailed down. They would trade islands and territories like a Monopoly board. If you had a war, to the victor belongs the spoils. In the Spanish American War we got Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines. I can’t make this stuff up. 

Some “protectorates” actually worked out pretty well. Regardless of population they have been awarded independent country status. French Polynesia (Tahiti) has around 280,000 people, the Cook islands at 17,000 and tiny Tokelau with 1837 at last count. For the right price you might become president, king or queen or at least prime minister of Tokelau. Your embassy will probably be a two bedroom apartment in Queens but hey, who is keeping score?

The surreality of this trip is in how far you are from home and also being several time zones away. At the end of our journey we will be just shy of 10,000 miles from LaLa Land. Today were are six hours behind New York and tomorrow we will be 23 hours ahead.Somewhere along the line we are going to lose Wednesday or is it Thursday? You all are aware of just how screwed up I am to start with. This only makes matters worse. Have pity on my poor wife. 

A good friend’s wife was operated on for lung cancer yesterday.We prayed for her.  My fellow Georgetown alumni had a memorial service on campus  at the Lauinger Library yesterday. Joe Lauinger C’67 was killed in Viet Nam 50 years ago to the day. I do not take lightly we are fortunate enough to make this trip. I am not unaware of the travails of the world. I think I will stop right now and just say thank you for all I have. I hope you do too. 

As always

Ted The Great

Factoids:

Polynesia (from the Greek words meaning “many islands”) is a large grouping of over one thousand Islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean.

The current population of Polynesia is 681,822 as of Saturday, January 4, 2020, based on the latest United Nations estimates. Polynesia population is equivalent to 0.01% of the total world population.

The Polynesians set out in rather large outrigger canoes with family, worldly goods and their dogs and cattle or what ever. The nearest land mass was Hawaii some 2500 miles away. This was in 400-500 AD. They had to navigate by the stars. It is a miracle they landed on the Big island. It was a male dominated society so no one ever asked for directions. 

Originally all the islands’ flora was created by birds bringing seeds in their craws or in their poop. Mother Nature at work again