Friday 15th
March
Today – nothing but accolades!!
Firstly for my nephew Will, slashing through the water like a
dolphin! This form the Mercury on
Tuesday:
HOBART'S Will Harmsen continues to leave a trail of
broken records in his wake after dominating the Tasmanian Age Swimming
Championships at Hobart Aquatic Centre over the long weekend.
The
17-year-old set a boys 17-18 200m butterfly all-comers record, bettered his
previous 100m all-comers butterfly record (previously held by "Mean
Machine" member Greg Fasala in 1983) and set Tasmanian 100m and 200m age
freestyle records.
And secondly to my son-in-law Jeff Thomas,
who has finally, after many patient months of waiting – the wheels grind
slowly, in UniversityLand – been informed that he has received his longed-for
PhD scholarship offer.
Congratulations to both of them for their
achievements! Will has many metres of speedy swimming to look forward to; Jeff
has three years of intensive research and writing ahead of him…
Cat Ba to Hanoi PH
and MH
We separated from Kerry and Rina for our
trip back to Hanoi. They decided to
leave it till the afternoon, so they could have a leisurely Cat Ba
morning. We decided to do the
bus-ferry-bus run in the morning so we, on the other hand. could have a
leisurely Hanoi afternoon… We had to be at the train station at 8.30 to go on
the night train to Sapa, in the north, so there was plenty of time. Plenty…
Our trip was reasonably uneventful. The buses came and went more or less on time,
so did the ferry. Our only difficulty was
that Huong was suddenly with us, with very VERY red eyes. Huong was the cameraman on the Junk trip, a
very pleasant young Vietnamese bloke.
Except he wasn’t all that pleasant on the ferry… He wanted us to get off
in Hai Phong, and let him drive us to Hanoi after a long meandering lunch. This, on the face of it, was a very generous
offer. It would have saved us, ooooh,
maybe $6.50. But we both knew, without
discussing it, that going with Huong would be a bad mistake and that we
probably would NOT get to the train station by 8.30 and would NOT get to Sapa
on the night sleepertrain. We probably
would not have got anywhere; Huong was stoned out of his brain and was not
making much sense at all. I was very
relieved that Pete had made the same conclusion; he just said, repeatedly,
“Thanks but no, we have our bus tickets, we will be right.” Thank God.
I suffer badly from punctuality anxiety and I would have been unbearable
to be with, hanging around in Hai Phong waiting for Huong to drive, or not
drive, us to the city. We had seats
right up the front of the bus, which was very good. Across from us was a woman from Manchester,
Joss, with her son, Frederick, who was about 15. She was trying to sleep while in the seat
directly behind her two Vietnamese girls were talking on their mobile
phones. At full volume, with lots of
shrieking to punctuate their separate conversations. Joss eventually gave up trying to nap and
looked at us with mute horror. It
transpired she and Frederick hadn’t been having the best of times. Their trip on Halong Bay had been a crock,
and they had been driven from Hanoi to Hai Phong in a small tourbus by a mad
person. Our bus was ducking and weaving
and swerving and Joss didn’t blink an eye; the tourbus driver must have been
very bad indeed….
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