15/06/15

My birthday was different this year.  It occurred while I was in Tuvalu, and on the day that Tuvalu had a public holiday to celebrate the Queen’s birthday.  Nice of them to have a holiday on my birthday. 

The day started with Susan and I briefly skyping before she went off to work, which was a really nice way to start to the day and left me with a smile. Despite it being a holiday for the locals I still had some work to do, and so spent the morning on the computer.

I had let slip to Kat over the weekend that my birthday was on Monday, and so she decided that as a minimum a group of us should have lunch together.  That’s how Tom and Katrina, Clara, Kat, Uschi, Liam, Rob and I all ended up having a lunch by the lagoon that was full of laughter and good company.  Kat even made me a couple of cakes.  After lunch I opened up the couple of small presents that I had brought with me.

Thank you all for making contributing to the uniqueness of the day, in a great way.

Unbeknownst to everyone, that lunch happened to coincide with the time that some ignorant arseholes decided that they would break into our home in New Zealand, and help themselves to some of our possessions.  Susan discovered the break in went she got home from work and saw the back door smashed open. 

Somehow I knew, when Tony popped up in facebook asking if I could call them on skype, that something had happened.  This was around 7 in the evening.  I’m not going to go into any of the details here, for many of reasons, one of which is that I suspect it would still affect me some.  What I would like to say here though, is that I am very very grateful for the way everyone rallied around to help Susan until I was able to get home.

Thank you Susan

Thank you Tony

Than you Fran

Thank you Debbie, Mark and Ellie,

Thank you Simon, Simon, Ray and Paige

Thank you to all in Tuvalu that understood and helped me go

Thank you to the Police who stayed on the line and helped Susan enter the house and be sure she was safe and no one was there, and for all the advice and support they gave her

Thank you.

Dinner is served on the island

It is Tuesday here in Tuvalu, and normally it would be a quiet night, but tonight the outside area is full of people celebrating a 21^st birthday.  I was going to do some work and so decided I would have my dinner in my room. (don’t tell, but I decided I had done enough work for this day and so read my ‘book’ instead)

I do enjoy how my mind wanders sometimes.  Where it wanders, I know, is often influenced by the environment around me, what I have been up to previously, and what I am processing underneath at the time.  That is for another post though.

Today, I was just going to write about my dinner, and describe how much it means to have something other than chicken in black bean sauce with rice.  Tonight I chose the option of sweet and sour chicken with chips and vegies.  Bit of a treat to have so many recognisable and desirable flavours on the plate at once.  The sweet and sour was just that  :) , the vegies were in fact a coleslaw and the chips were freshly out of the frier. Soft in the middle and crisp on the outside. 

While I was eating I realised that yet again I was saving the best till last.  The chips.  I always do this.  I will always save the ‘treat’ on the plate till last. 

When we have a roast, the last thing left if the roast onion.  So sweet and sometimes crunchy. 

It led me to wondering, does everyone save the best till last?  And if not, are those that do and those that don’t somehow different as groups in their personalities?  And amongst each group, are there common personality traits amongst their individualities???

See what I mean about how this mind sometimes meanders.  Food for thought for the future?  I sense some interesting research or dinner party questions coming on…

Oh and I liked the chips so much, there is a new bowl of them sitting next to me as I write this.  enjoy

Return from a hiatus

This has been my first post in more than a month, mainly due to the non birthday events that occurred on my birthday this year.  I’m not going to go into those now, or why the hiatus, but may do some time in the future.  Suffice to say that the arseholes who broke into our house while Susan was at work and I was in Tuvalu, probably have no idea of the knock on consequences of their actions!

Some of my posts in the near future will be about while I was back in NZ, so it’s useful to capture here, when I left Tuvalu and when I return.  Mind you, it should be fairly obvious from the posts.  So, I flew out of Tuvalu on the 16^th June (a week early due to the break-in) and flew out of Auckland to return to Tuvalu (where I am posting this from) on the 24^th July.

I remember when I started this blog that my intent was just to capture bits n pieces of happenings, observations, thoughts and the likes that I thought might be of interest to me in the future, and as a way of staying ‘in touch’ with the world from Tuvalu.  I think I mentioned also that I would post when I did and not to a set routine, well at least that was in my mind at the time if I didn’t write that.  It may be, that I post a bit more this trip than I have in the past, in part because I have been slack and tardy on staying up to date, and partly because I think it will be useful to me to do so. 

Anyway, this is the first post for a while, and as I like photos if I can, I thought I’d share what the full moon looked after rising here in Tuvalu on the 30^th July.

Hope you find something of interest in the posts to come if you are following or come across bits n pieces, and welcome to Isobella. The latest member of the Henricksen and Morgan families, who arrived just a bit early but is doing fine and will no doubt change us all in some way. :D