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If you want to go straight to Vol 32, you may do so now!
...
For reasons which may become apparent, the last two American Adventures will largely be written in close to dot point format; very brief, very to the point, not much detail. Hopefully time will eventually permit us to fill out the points and create a hugely amusing conclusion to our time in the US. As it stands, if we were to try at the moment we would suffer from a nervous breakdown. That might be amusing in a slapsticky sort of way but it really wouldn't help us very much.
We started the month in Disney World. We were there for four days, arriving on the last evening of November. Tim had some briefings on the morning of the 1st (the nominal reason why we were there), but in the afternoon and evening we visited Magic Kingdom. We were able to get to see most of the place in those hours but we did miss a couple of bits. We stayed right up until closing time, getting our last rides on the Peter Pan ride and then seeing the fireworks over Tinkerbell and Cinderella's castle. Kalle was amazed to see Tinkerbell fly off the castle. We were amazed that they fire off that many fireworks every night.
When we got back to the hotel region, we decided to go out for dinner. We had seen a castle thingy the previous night and went to check it out. It turned out that it was a theatre restaurant, with a Henry the Eighth theme. There was a set menu served on metal plates (very authentic looking), jugglers, a joker, a sword-swallower, acrobats, buxom serving wenches and the King (of course). Not long after we got there, there was a pause in the performance and the King went walking out among his subjects. Somehow he had noticed Kajsa and made somewhat of a beeline for her. They engaged in a little conversation and that seemed to be about that. Later in the evening, much to Kalle and Taltarni's surprise, Kajsa got to go up on the central stage and be part of the performance. The King naturally enough was in search of a new wife and he asked Kajsa to marry him. Despite being given specific lines to say, Kajsa made a bit of a freudian slip and managed to reply with "NO! I'M TOO OLD!" rather than the correct line of "No, you're too old!" The King didn't seem too offended. There were no threats to chop off her head and he danced with her for one set before returning her to the crowd.
You would think that the kids would have been very proud to see Kajsa up there on stage, with her hair out and dressed in a period-appropriate purple dress. Not as such. Kalle was very put out by the fact that someone else wanted to marry his mamma. He talked about it for a long time afterwards, trying to reassure himself that Kajsa was not thinking of leaving pappa, not even for a King. It was very cute. He also told mamma that she really wasn't that old. In a later conversation he was talking about her age again and said that it was only silly people who would think that she was old. Then he said that pappa wasn't silly (even though he has been known to mention that Kajsa is old). It was just that pappa had been listening to silly people!
On the second day we visited Animal Kingdom. This was probably the best park for a family. Magic Kingdom is more kid oriented. EPCOT is more adult oriented and MGM Studios was a bit on the bland side. We got to the Animal Kingdom early and stayed until closing time. The kids were very good considering that they must have been getting tired by this time. We got them some food at Burger King on the way home and Tim went out foraging while Kajsa put them to bed. He found a really nice Japanese restaurant which did "takeout" so he stood outside for a while in the very peaceful Koi garden, watching the fish and enjoying the very pleasant evening weather. The food, when it arrived, was excellent. We sat in the hotel with a bottle of wine and then watched "Stir of Echoes" on TV before falling into an exhausted sleep.
The next day we went to EPCOT. We were there until the very end when there is a fireworks/laser show. EPCOT has much more stuff for adults, we spent a bit of time in the morning and early afternoon in Future World and then spent hours in the various countries around the central lake. There really is no way you could see all of EPCOT in one day. For that reason we decided to come back the next day. Of course Kalle wasn't going to let that happen. We had been to the Castle, we had been to the Tree of Life, we had been to the Golf Ball and we need to go to the Mickey Mouse Ears Water Tower - also known as Disney-MGM Studios. Eventually we came to a compromise. We'd go to MGM Studios for a couple of hours in the morning and then go back to EPCOT until we had to leave for the plane.
As said before, MGM Studios was a little bland. If you have been to any studios before (WB or Universal), then there is little new there. There are some photo opportunities and they have the Tower of Terror (not kid friendly so we didn't go) but apart from that there is only the Honey I Shrunk the Kids! playground which is truly appealing. If you go to Disney World and have limited time, do Magic Kingdom if you must but focus on Animal Kingdom and EPCOT. If you have plenty of time, you might want to try a visit to Sea World rather than to the Studios.
When Kajsa woke up the next morning, after we had flown back to Virginia the previous evening (arriving close to midnight), the first thing she did was roll over to reach something and POP! her neck went out. For the next few days she was out of commission and couldn't go to work. Tim stayed home from work one day to take care of her, driving to the chiro, picking things up, feeding her, getting the kids to and from school, that sort of thing. She finally went into work in Thursday (against advice of the chiro).
The next day was the beginning of the end of our time here. We had our pre-removal inspection. A chappie from the removalist company came and looked at what we had and hummed and hawed and said "Yep" a few times. He was a surprised about how little stuff had. It seems that most other people accumulate a lot more junk. But, anyway, it really became clear at this point that we were going back to Australia. We talked to the landlord about our impending return and he has since arranged for the house to be put on the market, so there is a "For Lease" sign in the front yard now. All ominous signs that we are not much longer for this world, well, this continent at least.
We spent a lot of time in the next couple of weeks preparing the inventory, sorting stuff into categories (new, wood or food, outside, air freight, sea freight) and continuing to clean the stuff that had been outside.
The NA's Christmas party was held on the second Thursday of the month. This was a fine event but something indefinable was missing in the atmosphere. The previous year's party was great fun and this year's, while pleasant enough, seemed a little flat. The next day was the last Prayers for the year and Kajsa was able to get to it, a very rare event. We had a lot of fun catching up with people we hadn't seen socially for ages.
On Saturday we had a very full day, there was the Swedish School Luciafest in the morning, then Kajsa went to work and Tim took the kids into the Embassy for the Children's Christmas Party. Once that was over, Tim took them down to the Ellipse (in front of the White House) to see the National Christmas Tree. Their timing was perfect and they were able to see the tree when the lights were turned on.
On Sunday, we all went to the Tindalls for their Christmas drinks. We had initially intended to stay for a couple of hours but ended up staying for about four. Then we went home to collapse.
During the evening of Monday 13 December 1999, our lives changed significantly. While we had been happy to return to Australia, we had originally wanted to go back closer to the end of 2000 rather than at the beginning. Then, when Tim had been told that he absolutely had to return at the first months of the new millennium, he had been trying to arrange for a good job that was becoming vacant in Sydney. That job fell through as the incumbent (Steve Gatward) rudely left the Navy about six months too early and the job was filled by someone else. So, after that, Tim was offered a job in the ANZAC Ship Project. While there were certainly aspects of that job that sounded okay, it was nothing that really fired the imagination. Tim saw his future in the Navy as sitting in a desk job attending meetings, maybe getting promoted into another "highly important" desk job and waiting out his time until sometime in either 2003 or 2005 when he would resign. (2005 would give Kajsa ten years in government service and she would get long-service leave.) Our plan was then to go to live in Sweden for a year.
Kajsa was also in two minds about returning to Australia. She wanted to get back into something that was professionally challenging. Her job in Defence was not really the same as her work with Child Protection. She misses working with kids.
So, basically we were happy to get home, move back into our house, and catch up with friends and family, but career-wise we felt a little trapped. That all changed.
When Tim first joined the Navy, there were a few "Topmen" in his year. These were guys who had joined the Navy as sailors and been identified as officer material. They were given the chance to sit for their HSC and, on completion, they became Midshipmen. One of these was a guy by the name of Noel Pont. Noel eventually became a helo pilot and served with Tim on HMAS SYDNEY. After he left SYDNEY, he ended up as the poster for Aviators. As there aren't that many Aviators in the Navy, he also seems responsible for some other miscellaneous postings.
On this fateful Monday, just after "Everybody Loves Raymond" started (9pm), we got a phonecall. It was Noel. He had apparently been trying to find someone to fill a special posting and when looking at a list of suitable people he had noticed Tim's name on it.
Many years ago, while he was still posted to CDSC in Fyshwick, ACT, Tim had sat for language testing. His big plan was that, if he did well, he would try to use the results to wrangle a posting to Sweden and learn Swedish on company time. As he can pretend that this is written by a third person, Tim can report that he did quite well on that testing. In fact, he was told in the debrief that he had done well enough to learn Chinese, which is regarded as the hardest language there is to learn.
It was the list of results of this test that Noel had been looking at. What he wanted to know was: would we consider the possibility of back to back overseas postings? To Thailand?
From what Noel said, when tested Tim had the second highest score in the language affinity testing (and the top scorer left the Navy to become a test pilot somewhere) and there is considerable high-level interest in putting someone on the Royal Thai Defence Staff Course, which is of course presented in Thai. (Bizarrely enough, the Swedish Staff Course is apparently in English.) Later, it was confirmed that Tim was not first choice for the position (perhaps the test-pilot had been the first choice) but, in any event, somebody's resignation contributed to the short notice we got for the posting.
There are problems with the language training, of course. First is location. The ADF School of Languages is just outside Melbourne (rather than in Canberra or Sydney where the bulk of our friends are) and the course starts 31 Jan 00. That means that we will now be leaving the US on 22 Jan, arriving in Sydney for a three day rest stop on 24 Jan and then flying down to Melbourne to start looking for houses on the 27th. Not only do we leave the Washington Area three weeks early, but we no longer have the grand train trip across the US. Rather than starting work on Mar 21, Tim starts seven weeks earlier!
The family will come with Tim when he does the Staff Course and Kajsa is allowed to sit in on the training. The long-term plan is for Tim to be posted to the Australian Embassy in Bangkok on completion of the Staff Course, either as the Assistant Defence Attaché or, possibly, the Defence Attaché. Given the importance of relations between our two countries in the South East Asian region, this is certainly a prestigious position for someone of Tim's relative juniority.
Needless to say, we are very excited about this tremendous change of fortunes and are looking forward to the Thai Adventure!
The following week was a little strange. The posting remained unconfirmed until Friday, when the signal was released so we didn't want to get our hopes up. Equally, we didn't want to tell anyone until we were absolutely certain that it would happen. On the other hand, we also had to start planning. We realised that, if it went ahead, taking into account the trip to the Bahamas, we would only be in the house for three more weeks. We had no time left to do everything. We went into a fury of activity. We also spent a lot of time pinching ourselves and remarking that we just couldn't believe it.
Once we were assured that the posting was going ahead, one of first major changes was that Kajsa resigned from Kohls. She did let her manager know that there was a chance that she might leave at short notice so they could make appropriate plans. When it came down to it, she left with two days notice. On Monday she was working as normal, by Friday it was her last day. Before going to work, Kajsa went to Kalle's class at school to help make a gingerbread house. This was a special day for the kids as well as it was their last day at school for the year. Not special enough for their mean old father to get home early to pick them up though.
On Saturday, we went to the Halberg/Greenburg-Hudd's for Christmas drinks. It was a select crowd and we felt honoured to be in attendance. Shosh and Tony don't normally celebrate Christmas, Tony is a heathen and Shosh is a lapsed Jew. From what we can tell, they don't normally even celebrate Chanukah. This year they went all out, even to the extent of putting up a Christmas tree that almost poked through their ceiling. On the way home, we checked out all the Christmas lights, mostly for the benefit of the adults. Kalle and Taltarni were extremely tired and, although Taltarni managed to stay awake, she was nearly delirious with exhaustion.
On the evening before Christmas Eve, we went to Anna-Carin and Staffan's for dinner. Tim was a little bemused by a "proper" Christmas celebration, complete with plenty of spontaneous singing always ending in "skål" and drinking of "snaps". In Kajsa's family, there is a little (well, a lot) less drinking at Christmas time so he has not been exposed to the full cultural experience.
On Christmas Eve, the day that we actually celebrate (in Swedish tradition), we were by ourselves. This was the first time, in all the years that Kajsa and Tim have been together, that we didn't either have guests or celebrate Christmas with others. It was a little odd but not completely unpleasant.
As the month ended with us in the Bahamas, a trip which bridged two millennia, it will be covered in the next, final, chapter.
(When in obsessive-compulsive mode, Tim would agree that the new millennium actually starts in 2001, but it will be a very sad group of pointy-heads who celebrate the start of the third millennium on 31 Dec 2000. It is worth noting that, if you are going to be pedantic, a millennium starts every day - it is just a matter of what reference point you want to take it from.)