Wednesday 7^th November

Happy birthday Chris Wilson!  One of many Chris Wilsons in Hobart, male and female, but my one and only Chris Wilson friend and confidante of many years.

On Monday I acquired a new friend, much loved and treasured already…O so faithless am I…

I so loved my iPhone 3 but…I have been seduced away from its glory by the even more fabulous glory of an iPhone 5…It was inevitable that I would discard my trusty ancient phone…it has happened before… I always love my mobile phones most desperately – this is the one respect in which Pete and I are very VERY different.  His phones are always bloody bastard bitches of things, prone to running out of steam (they DO need to be charged quite regularly, dear Pete…) and to behaving in mysterious and undesirable ways (one needs to spend a lot of time gently getting to know one’s new phone, I find.)

I had to spend about an hour in the NextByte shop while Ellen, a most helpful young person, patiently negotiated the maze that is Telstra to set up a new contract for me and my new BFF.  She sent me of to look at phone covers – it was impossible to choose, so many slick and shiny variations on the theme.  After a while she called me over and said, very kindly, “If I were getting a cover, I would get one of those German ones.  They are very stylish and serviceable.”  With this in mind my choice was clear: aqua frame, with a tasteful design of winter trees and bluebirds on the back.  Too lovely for words!

My new phone is lighter, brighter, has a bigger screen, does more tricks.  I look pitying on my old one, which has had its SIM card wrenched from its innards, and which is ready to be handed on to Jeff, who will, I hope, love it as much as I did…

India #12

All over the big cities we could see tiffin wallahs plying their trade around lunchtime.  Tiffins are lunches, lovingly prepared by wives at home, packed into insulated sort of billycans, and then picked up and carted off on big wooden handcarts, piled high, or on the back of rickshaws, to be delivered to workers all over the city.  Absolutely fascinating.  The thousands of tiffin containers all have symbols and squiggles in various colours on them, and the tiffin wallahs decipher these squiggles and get the right tiffin to the right worker, up and down busy streets, in and out of tall buildings – how do they do this??  Most of these workers are totally illiterate, but very skilled in working out and remembering very complex codes!