DOW' NUNDAH! -- June 13, 2017 – Many Meetings (Aussie Edition)

The Spice Girls greeted us in Brisbane. At least, as soon as the plane landed and the “seat belts on” light went off and the cabin lights went on, the radio started playing, and I heard those sonorous sounds of the 90’s:

I’ll tell ya what I want

What I really really want

So tell us whatcha want

Whatcha really really want...

Ok, so "Wannabe" was always a stupid song. But it welcomed us to Australia.

I figured you'd rather see a sunset than the Spice Girls.

A bit later, the power unexpectedly went out in the plane—come to think of it, it’s scary to think it might’ve a few hours earlier—and everything went silent. Just then, the lone, lonely voice of an Aussie broke the silence:

“Awh, the Spoice gihls uh roff!”

I swiveled my head and saw a dryly grinning steward. I liked that guy. Soon the power was restored and things went on as usual.

Speaking of things you might rather see than the Spice Girls:

"Friendship never ends" - The Spice Girls

*

After passing through customs, the airport corridor forked and we were forced to choose between a sign that said “Pilots” or “Airline employees” or something on the right, and a huge, glamorous display of liquor on the left. Couldn’t see another door anywhere. The lady in front of the liquor display saw Mom and me looking confusedly around and pointed through her store. Apparently, we had to run the gauntlet to get out of the airport.

“How’d you know [we were wondering where to go]?” I asked her.

“Jist a woild gies,” she said, smoiling charmingly.

*

Soon we met a car rental employee whose English was hard to make out (it wasn’t his first language, and an Aussie accent to boot made it a little tricky for us). Eventually he said something condescending, as if we were a bit slow to not be understanding him, which irked me a bit. We were trying to wade through his perhaps oily attempts to upsell us when he made the comment. My mom brokered peace and settled on a higher rate than we probably wanted for insurance (which we hadn’t been told about when we’d booked the car in advance), then told me not to let it bother me. It wasn’t worth it. It’s easier to write about now since I got Qantas to revoke his VISA. 

(I'm actually a conservative, but I thought this would be funny.) 

Actually, the rental company asked later about our experience and that led to things smoothing over. Much calmer by then, we still weren’t sure how to put it and the manager insisted on a true report. I said the guy probably shouldn’t suffer any sort of punishment, but just a tip that his tone could be gentler might improve people’s experience. That was right before we left Brisbane to Cairns (where the next car we’d booked was unexpectedly upgraded to a chartreuse muscle car, perfect for navigating jungles and mountains near beaches), but that comes later in the story.

*

The sturdy wood door of the mission home—headquarters—opened, but no one stood behind it. To the right, a cute lady with a silver bob haircut and twinkling eyes appeared, wearing a nametag that said “Sister McSwain” and holding a video camera. My mom turned her head to the left where a radiant face framed with dark blonde hair appeared—Sister Snow, Malissa, the littlest of her children, from whom she’d been an ocean away for about a year and a half.

“Mom!” Malissa said, in a tone that said happiness and relief and something so sweet there were tears. Mom didn’t say anything, she just cried and took Malissa in. Malissa beamed with her eyes closed, holding Mom tight, leaking tears down her cheek.

It’s quite a sight, the reunion of an empty nest’s guardian and the last and littlest bird to leave it. I didn’t see Mom’s face for awhile, but I’m sure it mirrored Malissa’s. They have a similar beauty—people commented on it all through Australia, how they resembled each other—and similar spirits, sweet and caring.

I wasn’t sure I should have come, thought maybe this was supposed to be just a trip for the two of them, but Malissa sweetly beamed and hugged me too, and later in the car she turned back from the passenger seat to take my hand and say, “I’m glad you’re here.” She always gets whatever she wants,” I’ve said many times, in reference to getting to serve in Australia for example, “but she’s so sweet no one can resent her for it.”

*

Despite an inevitably busy schedule, President and Sister McSwain nonetheless took the time to welcome us to their home, talk to us about Malissa and her good work and influence, and give us tips on enjoying our trip. The welcome occurred largely in their living room—a sunken room with a vaulted ceiling that had clean grey couches and a hearth with a beautiful picture over it—Carl Bloch’s famous painting called “The Rich Young Ruler.”

The truly conservative--and liberal--candidate.

In it, the Savior calls the attention of a clearly

affluent young man towards a few obviously poor and suffering people nearby him. It represents a story in Luke 18 that addresses the heart of Christianity—letting go of whatever it is you want most for yourself so that you can be the greatest blessing possible for your fellow men. President McSwain explained they also use it to tell their missionaries—who often come from wealthier backgrounds—that the Savior wants them to look to the poor as their equals and to love them duly as such.

President McSwain had made his money in the gas and oil industry, which he’d worked in over in Roosevelt—eastern Utah. He was probably well off himself, like most mission presidents—to drop all business affairs for three years to simply serve, one has to be well-situated. It illustrates Jacob 2:18-19 for me, how if we find the kingdom of Christ, thereafter if we seek for riches, it will be with the intent to do good. It’s neat to me that he was an example of what he was trying to get his missionaries to be.

Sister McSwain might have impressed me even more. She was sweet, energetic, and caring—things that are tremendous when you actually encounter them, although as a description they might not mean much, since those words are too often and irresponsibly used. The way she took my hand and looked at me seemed to recognize my worth and affirm it. It mattered to me. She didn’t know me at all, besides as Sister Snow’s older brother, but she cared. I think she would have whoever I was. When she learned about our tangled flight plans, she offered to have someone bring Malissa’s luggage to the airport to meet us, so she could take a simple travel bag for the next three weeks. It was an unexpected offer to sacrifice on our behalf in a very helpful way. More movingly, it was a sweet, energetic, and caring gesture.

*

After dropping off our stuff at our lodgings, Mom, Liss and I went off in search of dinner. Google Maps told us some cheap Indian food was .3 miles from our place, so we decided to walk.

It was winter dow nundah, what with the season of the southern hemisphere being opposite ours in the north, so though it was only 5 or 6, it was already totally dark. The Big Dipper, North Star, and Little Dipper were all gone as well—or rather, they shone somewhere directly up from below us, on the other side of earth (although it was day there, so northerners wouldn’t have seen them shining). As a coastal city, though, Brisbane’s climate was moderate though, so walking was nice—especially when we caught a whiff of Indian food on the breeze. We joked about following our noses instead of the Google Maps directions to find it, which suddenly struck me as an actually brilliant idea,

"If in doubt, Meriadoc..." 

 but Mom implied she actually didn’t think so.

Malissa laughed at the delicacy of Mom’s insinuation and the differences between Mom and I, then Mom and I laughed too. Turned out we probably wouldn’t have found the food but I still would’ve liked to try. The food itself was delicious and the menu was excellent, with the chef straight up dissing dishes he didn’t like. Gotta love personality. (Sorry I don’t remember his disses, just that he was anti-sugar.)

Waddling homeward after stuffing ourselves with chicken tikka masala, we detoured to pick up some groceries for breakfast. I asked the cashier how his day was going, and he said it was great until just now when he’d had to call a guy out for shoplifting. Just then, Mom asked me if I had put everything on the scanner and in context it seemed like a gentle hint to cough up whatever I was hiding. I suddenly panicked and worried I actually did have something hidden, and the cashier—a chill guy of about twenty—bobbed his head to one side then the other, seeming to scan my pockets and hands. My hands came out empty and we all laughed and shook our heads.

“’Bye!” we told him.

“Cheers,” he said.

DOW' NUNDAH! -- June 12, 2017 – In Memoriam

I say, “June 12, 2017 – In Memoriam,” although technically I have no memory of that day. 

Technically, I never lived it. 

At 11 PM or so, Pacific Time, on June 11, Qantas Flight 15 left LA. Before it was 12 AM—June 12—we had reached another time zone west, and thus gone back an hour. This process repeated for several hours through the night, while I was out on Sominex—Doot doot do doo do doo doot DOO!—until we crossed the international date line, and it became June 13, 2017. June 12^th had simply vanished. Or rather, it had never even appeared. No sight of it at all, besides the way the clock approached 11:34 PM or so before a new time zone switched it to 10:34 PM.

Samoa wasn't where we went to.

So I guess I don’t remember you, June 12, 2017, but I remember that you might have been. For me, you were worse than forgotten—you were never known—but what you might have been. That will always be with me.

Maybe I’ll have to learn of you from other people’s blogs and such.

(Don’t start reading them though now, people reading this. I’m sure it’s way overrated.)

DOW' NUNDAH! – June 11, 2017 – Sominex and the Spirit of Australia

I meant to write all about my trip to Australia in this segment of my blog, my journey along with me mum to go pick up my youngest sibling, Malissa, from her 18-month LDS mission to Brisbane, but it turns out I’ll have to interrupt that tale right off the bat with a commercial break.

SOMINEX! Doot doot do doo do doo doot DOO! (Catchy ditty.) 

Can you honestly tell me Sominex isn't making millions off this pic?

The stuff is magical! I slept for 8.5 hours on the plane thanks to those pills—and they’re not even habit forming!

But let me rewind a little.

Waiting in the LA airport for the flight that would take us down under (hereafter, dow’ nundah), I gushed to my mom about some magical blue gel pills Uncle Johnny had once given me before my study abroad to Jerusalem. Miraculously, they helped me sleep all the way across the Atlantic, allowing me to completely skip over the hours of waiting in cramped airline confines and to simply wake up relatively refreshed (but for some jet lag) as our plane was about to land in Austria (en route to Jeru). It was like in Jack and the Beanstalk, how he gets some wonderful, magical beans from a mysterious source but once he’s used them, they’re gone—he can never get them back again. 

This is a much cooler picture of gel capsules than I could find by googling "Jack and the Beanstalk."

I didn’t know how to get my pills again because Uncle Johnny had given them to me in an unlabeled bottle. I raised an eyebrow at the bottle but he insisted (like the vender of the beans) that they were magic, so I went for it, and it turned out that they were.

I guarded them jealously for years, hoarding them (he’d given me about 10) for a long flight now and then, alas, now they were gone. If only I could get them again. Mom sympathized, but what could she do? I continued rambling about their wondrous power, until after an hour or so Mom’s phone rang.

It was Uncle Johnny.

“Sominex,” he said, “Diphanol hydroxine.” (Actually, I can’t remember the generic name, so I just scrambled some sciency syllables together to sound convincing.) Within moments I found some at a kiosk in the LA airport—hallelujah!—and within hours I was zonked out on a plane.

Now I am left wondering about the magic of Sominex, but perhaps even more so about the magic of timeliness. I’m not sure what it was that prompted Uncle Johnny to call, but he did—right then, right as we were in need (or rather in genuine want, as my rambling showed). He doesn’t call that often either. He lives rather far away in rural Nevada, when he’s in the country.

Nevada's desert may be deserted by most, but never by Uncle Johnny.

Maybe he only comes or calls when he is called—when he senses his relatives are taking initiative to some far-off place or other. Maybe initiative has some sort of gravitational pull. Whatever the case, he’s 2 for 2 in my book. So here’s to you, Uncle Johnny, and here’s to Sominex!

(Sadly, no time today for anything except that word from our sponsors.)

(Please give me money, Sominex.)

*

This just in from Sominex: “No money for your commercial. Sorry.
PS – Please don't sing that ditty around our product."

Guess I’ll finish my post.

*

Mom and I actually might’ve saved even more money by booking with the ultimate discount airlines—Tigerair and Jetstar in the Australian neck of the world—but to avoid stressful distractions on such a meaningful trip for Malissa, we decided to go with Qantas Airlines—in Dad’s words, “The Delta Airlines of Australia,” in other words, a main player. Then the travel agency (Travel By Design) got us the same tickets for $950, so we had the best of both worlds—quality and savings.

Good thing we did, too, since once we flew on Delta from SLC to LA, we discovered we couldn’t check in to our Qantas flight. We eventually found a Qantas desk and a helpful Hispanic lady named Brenda. As we talked, she asked, “Do you have your electronic VISAs?” I always thought of VISA as a credit card, but VISA also refers to permission from a country to enter their country—an unfortunate coincidence, I think. But anyway, Mom and I looked at each other:

“Uh, no. We don’t have our VISAs. We sort of forgot those.”

Brenda exhaled slowly.

“So, you’re fortunate you booked with us, because at Qantas, we have access to a system that lets us get you VISAs right now, which is what I’m doing—but most airlines don’t have that. The other day, a lady came in without a VISA and couldn’t get one before her flight, so she missed it and had to buy another one. A VISA for Australia usually costs $50 but I can get you each one for free.”

In other words, “You were idiots, but I’m taking care of everything."

We exhaled in relief. Maybe too much, so Brenda began going on, trying to make sure we learned our lesson without having suffered any consequences.

Go on, Brenda. We're listening.

I can’t really remember what she said, because it didn’t really seem to matter—I’d just gotten off the hook without any consequences—but I do remember her sort of straining to say things as politely as she could despite how dumb people who needed them explained must be. “So, you can’t get into a foreign country without a VISA”—things like that.

And we knew all that, now that we thought of VISAs, but somehow amid our school years and planning the trip and finding cheap flights, somehow we’d both clean spaced getting VISA’s—it might’ve had something to do with being American too, how most countries are happy to trust and welcome you anyway, bless them.

At any rate, thanks to Qantas’s system and Brenda, we got our VISAs to Australia, and soon got on our way.

Qantas’s slogan is the Spirit of Australia, by the way, and if that’s the spirit of Australia, letting absent-minded but well-meaning people in, then it’s the place for me.

I smiled, and zonked out on Sominex.

DOW’ NUNDAH! - Introduction

                               “Dow’ Nundah!” 

-- Introduction -- 

I Come from the Land Dow’ Nundah!

Like most Americans, journeying to Australia— “Down Under”—has always sounded adventurous to me. Like most, I never thought I’d go. Unlike most, I had a sister, Malissa Snow[BaDS1] , who volunteered to preach Jesus Christ and him crucified for 18-months of her life.

"Sistah" - Darth Vader, Return of the Jedi

She didn’t know when she volunteered to go that she would be assigned to Australia, but she was thrilled when she got that assignment. LDS missionaries can be called anywhere, and that was exactly where she wanted to go—there or New Zealand, anyways, that neck of the woods. She is the youngest of five, naturally sweet and content to live her life without getting much attention. Part of that may be because her older siblings, of whom I am the eldest, have quirky personalities that occasionally call for any attention at hand. Whether she gracefully adapted to this or came gracefully prepared for it, I don’t know; I do know it’s easy to be happy for her. Thus, I laughed at loud with my own happiness at her                                                                                          reaction, which was as follows.

What I remember best is sitting on the couch watching a movie as a family, maybe fifteen minutes after she’d opened her mission call and assignment. She was sitting on the couch to the side of mine. As I watched, I suddenly heard a high-pitched sound to my left. It startled me, sounding a bit like a kettle boiling. I turned to see the sound was from Malissa. There was the faintest trace of sheepishness in her face when we turned to see “What was that?” but that was overshadowed—or overlit—by her radiant delight. “I’m going to Australia!” she explained. She was the kettle that had boiled over with happiness—unwatched, since that’s the way kettles boil best.

Like a pot, this isn't boiling because someone is looking at it.

 It was an emblematic moment of her, since, like I say, she’s never asked for too much attention. She’s rarely been watched as much as she ought to have been—maybe that connects to all the joy that is bubbling up within her

*

A year into her mission, she had learned to love serving—learned to lose her life a little more and to begin living the life of Christ—and Mom was planning a trip to visit her. Mom was excited to go meet the people that mattered so much to Malissa, and to explore Australia a bit to boot, so she’d set aside some funds for the two of them to travel together after Malissa’s mission ended. She had to fly from our home in Utah to Brisbane, then up to Cairns (an area Malissa was in and was loving—right by the Great Barrier Reef), then over to New Zealand before returning home. “If it’s not too expensive, could we go to Hobbiton too while we’re down here?” Malissa had asked Mom. The flight total for Mom was going to be about $1750. I heard that and was certain we could do better, so, that Saturday I spent 4-5 hours scouring every option online, and ended up finding all the flights she needed for around $1300. (4-5 hours to save 400 is about $100 an hour savings—per person. Not bad.) The main breakthrough, in case you’re interested in flying on the cheap, was realizing that flying one way from LA to Brisbane to Cairns to Auckland to LA was actually more expensive than flying round trip every time—as in, round trip from LA to Brisbane on both ends of the trip, from Brisbane to Cairns and back first, then Brisbane to Auckland and back last, then, as I mentioned, the flight back from Brisbane to LA.

Anyway, then we called a travel agency who had special discounts available and they said they could get the same tickets for $950. NINE FIFTY. 

"Fiftay! If it wus whon!" - someone in Braveheart that I couldn't find a pic of online

Suddenly I realized, freshman adjunct instructor that I am, even I might buy a ticket at that price.

So I did. (Sadly, the rest of our family couldn’t come due to various responsibilities. Malissa graciously allowed me to join in though.)

This next section of my blog (which has basically been brought out of retirement from several years ago), is dedicated to the meaningful moments of that trip. Early on in Brisbane we passed a freeway sign for a place called “Nundah,” which sounded like the second half of “Down Under” pronounced with an Aussie’s accent, and thus I introduce the title of these tales of travel:

“Dow’ Nundah!”

Oh, and I almost forgot. Just in case you haven’t ever caught a glimpse of Australia and thus don’t know how cool it promises to be, I recommend watching this video, which was officially designated by the Australian government to represent their most chill and friendly nation:

(Alternatively, you might watch Finding Nemo or The Man from Snowy River – both great flicks, just not as culturally representative as the aforementioned music video.)

Cheers for tuning in, chums,

Bentley

PS - Just got back from the trip, actually, which went from June 11, 2017 - July 6, 2017 (two July 6's, actually--stay tuned for more). Amid my other writing projects--most notably the trucking memoir, 6 Fingers Left to Lose--I'll be uploading my stories retroactively as I write things up from journal entries. I hope to get this done quickly before memories fade too much.