Rain and night

'Ran into an Ugly Singaporean at the check-in line: this gentleman in his mid-fifties, in a safari suit and gray hair, was straddling the space between two counters. When I politely inquired if he is was in line, he gruffly replied, "These two lines are mine." I was in too high spirits to be annoyed by what was basically Ah Pu's retired relative with a terminal case of dandruff, instead, when a counter opened and he rushed headlong towards it — overstuffed luggage (bursting at the seams) and red jacketed Singapore passport in hand, I cheered, "Run! Run! The ship is sinking! Woman and children first!" And made the old fool a laughing stock.

Ah, what a start.




Beautiful! Simply beautiful!

Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog: nobody really enjoys it, and the frog generally dies as a result. (E. B. White)





After touchdown.





It's nice to feel temperatures in the 60s F (16 C) again, despite the rain.





A panorama of Swan River from the top of Kings Park. 'Shot this after a nice, dark (if drizzly) climb up quiet avenues from the campus of the University of Western Australia. Trivia: Kings Park is significantly larger than New York's Central Park.

'Paid a price for that picture though: during the descent, dark roads + speed + slicks + rain + wet leaves = wipe out city. The buttons on the GPS unit stopped responding and there's a leak somewhere in my rear tire. The ballistic AccuCase for my camera paid for itself by protecting the camera from the impact.

Oh, by the way, I didn't have a cell phone on me, and neither did I need one — still managed to limp back. If Reinhold Messner can summit Mount Everest solo, during the monsoon in 1980, when there was no one else on the entire mountain, without a cell / satellite phone, then I can jolly well make my way back from a hill in the middle of a city without one too. (I know it just kills the sheeple out there to hear that :-P )