Summer News

In June, P and I went up on Friday for the campfire at scout camp, stayed overnight, then drove the young men down. Our air mattress was missing the plug, so it was a long night using backpacking pads under our sleeping bags. We went for a hike up the Butterfly Trail early Saturday morning.

A few days later, we went to the temple with D and P and sealed his parents, and he to them. I was proxy for C M and felt the spirit strongly as we did the sealing. It sure appears that they have stronger missionary work on the other side of the veil.

On July 1 we drove to Panguitch. We found that the 65-watt inverter that used to work with the laptop computer would only work for recharging the laptop when it wasn't in use. The following day we traveled to Provo, then went to Lagoon with the family. It was a rainy day, which discouraged many of the people from coming, and many left; consequently the lines were short and the day was quite pleasant.

The following day I went with D C to pick up H from the airport. Later we went to the temple and did baptisms for some of our McCay relatives. We had to wait for quite a while, but it was good to be there in the temple.

On Saturday the 4th, 3 of the family ran the 5K run. P and I went down and cheered them on; then we met the Cs for breakfast; then we looked around the booths. There were mainly activities for young children and booths where people could buy junk they don't need. From there we went the M B F's for a picnic lunch. We visited for a while, then went to L B's having a good visit with them. We went and visited with their son L and his family and saw his newly remodeled home. L's wife R is really a lot of fun, much like L. L was reading something, and I commented to her, “You still don't wear glasses?” and she replied, “Men don't make passes at girls who wear glasses.”

On Tuesday we went to the Oquirrh Mountain temple open house. It was very nice. We went to the adjacent stake center, and saw the labeling of the rooms for training various volunteers—it appears that training goes on each morning, so everyone knows what to do. There was also a control center, and there was in large bold letters on the wall the phone number of the local police department. As expected, the Church prepares for all contingencies, so that the rejoicings of His children are not interrupted by those who don't understand.

We prepared a care package for W, and the Cs and S and D dropped that off at the mission office, and W was there, and they got to greet him. M C said that he looks very good and seemed to be very happy.

After leaving the open house, we met P's Uncle S and had dinner with him at the Lion House. The food was excellent. It seems to me that I had been there many years ago, possibly with the Ts. Afterward we went to the Church Art and History Museum. I very much enjoyed our time there. One interesting painting was a portrayal of Jacob and Leah in a modern setting, Jacob being a disgruntled man sitting is a chair, and tentative Leah standing behind a nearby chair. Leah was wearing glasses, harking back to L's comment a few days before.

On Wednesday, I went to the Ogden temple and did the initiatory work for some of the McCay men. I had given the rest of the names to S and S as she hasn't done any Initiatory work since she went through originally. W had said that he wanted to do some endowments, so I went over to the mission office to drop off some names, and I was informed that he was in a training meeting at that time. I also spoke with his last companion who said that W was a good missionary and he enjoyed working with him.

We tried to install some running boards on the new Toyota Tundra the Cs had purchased, but there were for a longer cab, and we needed to package them up and sent them back.

On Thursday we packed up and went to Provo. We went to the Paleontology Museum, then had a birthday dinner for J M with S and S. Afterwards we went swimming. On Friday we drove clear to Tucson from Provo—a long, long day.

On July 23, 2009, I flew from Tucson to Los Angeles. My flight to Auckland was to have left at 10:30 pm, but it was canceled because of a fuel pump problem. The board showed that it was postponed, but both the front desk and the desk by the gate were swamped with people on the 9:30 flight. The board said the 9:30 flight was on-time, but they didn’t start loading the plane until 10:15 pm. After that flight was off, I could talk to someone. They put us up at the Hilton, which was very nice. I had arisen that morning about 3:30 am, and by the time I got to bed I couldn't sleep. I think I got to sleep about 2:30 and slept until 6. They asked us to come to the airport at 10 am to leave at noon, but arriving at the airport, our flight was delayed two more hours. We finally left about 2:30 pm. We arrived at Auckland about 10:30 pm, were bussed to hotels, and I got to sleep about 12:30 pm. I caught the 5:30 shuttle, and was flying to Melbourne at about 8 am. The sun was just coming up as we left, so I really didn’t see anything of New Zealand.

Arriving at Melbourne, I took the bus to the city. Coming out of the bus terminal, I looked at my map and determined the route to take to a shuttle, but after walking a ½ mile I determined that I was walking north instead of south. When I looked at the sun I knew it was winter, so I assumed that the sun would be in the south sky. That assumption is not true south of the equator. I started back, but having my heavy suitcase, and probably about twelve hours of sleep the previous three days, including a couple on the plane, I took a taxi to my hotel. I changed clothes and took the shuttle to the Church. I asked the driver if it was safe to be out at night where my hotel was, and he said that it was for me—but there are violent incidents occurring in the city where minority people are targeted.

The Internet had indicated that I could buy a trolley ticket on the trolley itself—I could, but I didn’t have coins to buy the pass with. By then the trolley was moving. I rode illegally, and got to the Church as the meetings were just ended. I spoke to a man who had a nametag “R...”. He was the son of a missionary couple who had served in our ward in 1989 or so. I told him that they were extremely effective activating members of our ward. He was pleased to hear that. He mentioned that his father had been talking about his mission just that previous week.

The ward mission leader, R C, visited with me, and invited me to attend their missionary correlation meeting. He also asked me to give a spiritual thought. I told them about Brother Rs’ parents serving in my ward and how effective they were, what we’re doing with the President Monson approach, and I read from the Doctrine and Covenant a President Monson favorite scripture, “I will be on your right had and your left…”. I very much enjoyed the spirit of the meeting. They had two full-time missionaries serving the Chinese people, two Chinese ward missionaries who assist them, and four other full-time missionaries. They all had a good spirit about them. R pointed me to the train station where I could purchase a trolley ticket, but then I found that it wouldn’t give changes for more than $10. I thought I had just $20 and $50 notes, but I had a $10, which worked.

Returning to the hotel, I changed clothes and went to the Botanic Gardens. They were very nice, but the sun was too far down to get any pictures. Walking from there, I went by the Memorial to the Men who died during the first World War. Walking towards the city, there was a statue of a man on a horse. I looked at the inscription, but it wasn’t for the “Grand ol’ Duke of York.”

I then bought a meat and mushroom pie dinner and returned to my hotel. The hotel was older, but the bed was comfortable and the linen and bathroom was clean. The heat was provided by a register, but even though I had it on high, I don’t think the room got above 66 degrees. The two managing the hotel were a brother and sister from China.

A difficulty with the trolleys there is that the stops aren’t marked very well, and it’s hard to know were to get off. Coming home from Church, I asked a young lady to tell me when my stop was, and she did. She got off too, and we spoke while walking down the street. She was very friendly. She works in the Victoria Market selling vegetables, and she and her husband are from India. I told her I’d just been to Church and told her the name of the Church, and asked if she knew about it. She hadn’t, but she’d seen our missionaries, and I told her that they have a good message.

I awoke at 3:30 this morning, and worked on editing my journals from 2000-2008. I also worked some on improving my Sudoku program. I think I have found why it continues iterating when it has found a solution.

I checked out of the hotel, dropped my suitcase at the hotel where the conference is to be, and went to the aquarium. It was very interesting. Australia has the most unique wildlife. Afterwards, I went to the Melbourne Museum. It had dinosaurs, bug collections, an aborigine section, a human brain section, a section which covered historical Melbourne, Pacific canoes and weapons, the first Australian computer, their world champion race horse, and other things.

Leaving the aquarium, I asked a clerk if there was a water fountain where I could fill up my water bottle. She replied, “No, but you can do what I do and just fill it up from the toilet.” Over there, “toilet” means the entire room. For dinner I went to a Thai place having salad and noodles and prawns.

On July 28, I ate granola for breakfast again—this is granola that I brought from the United States. Passing through customs in both New Zealand and Australia, I had to declare it, but they didn’t confiscate it. After breakfast, I really wanted a roll, so I went out and got a doughnut; then headed over to the marketplace. It was a amazing. I was puzzled because last night I asked a doorman where I could get a fish dinner, and he really didn’t have any good suggestions. Neither did I see any fish restaurants, but there were booth after booth in the market selling fresh fish. I bought some gifts, some dates for me, had a baked fish and chips lunch, wrote up some postcards and mailed them, saw Saint Paul’s cathedral where the organist was practicing, and started my work assignment.

I spoke with a young woman who was employed by the United Nations to raise funds for the refugees of Sudan. She was surprised that I knew so much about what was going on in Sudan. I spoke to her about our humanitarian outreach of our Church, and shared some of the projects that I knew of.

I attended a presentation by an IBM vice president, then attended the reception. There was sushi and other hors d’vors and soda and other drinks.

One man stated that he had gotten married on Sunday, and I asked him what he was doing here. He said that he wanted to come to the show, and besides many of their relatives came from the United Kingdom, so they’ve stayed and are visiting with his wife.

On July 29, I attended the storage presentations, and I gave a presentation What’s New in TSM 6.1 in one of the sessions. That evening I ate dinner at an Italian place having lasagna.

At the conference, they had these hand-held devices on which participants could answer questions. At the end they asked us to put a text good-bye message into the device, and the good-bye messages were displayed to everyone in the hall. One person wrote, “I have the swine flu.” Currently there is pandemic concerning the swine flu. It hasn’t proven as deadly as they were worried, but it does most quite easily.

On July 30, I attended the last day of the conference, giving another presentation on performance tuning for TSM. After it was over I went to the Regent Theater and put my name on the lottery list. Then at 6 pm they chose 25 tickets, and those people who were chosen could pay $30 to get into see Wicked. I wasn’t one of the lucky ones, so I bought a ticket for $119. I then went and got dinner at a Korean place. It was excellent.

The show was tremendous from the scenery, to the special effects, to the acting, to the plot. It was well worth the money I paid, multiplying $119 by 0.9 gives the equivalent price in our dollars. The show talked about why people are the way that they are and how people are often misunderstood, how difficulties affect our personalities, and that sometimes people we think are good are not.

On Friday I met with our business partners at the IBM site which was about a ten-minute walk from my hotel. The meetings were productive. That night I was planning on going out for fish near the docks, but then I found a fish restaurant right by the Regent Theater as I was walking by. It was about 5:30 and I thought about signing up for the lottery again, but I didn’t.

They had steamers, and they were wonderful. My only regret is that I didn’t find that restaurant the first day was there.

I kept waking up about 3 in the morning. I logged on at work and worked on defects that came out of a static analysis program that we use. On Thursday, morning I awoke at 3 or so, but I managed to get back to sleep again. Then at 4:30 the doorbell rang—room service bringing breakfast. Unfortunately, it was for the room next door. Oh, well.

I had been eating granola (in fact, I found a store which had soy milk) and trail mix for breakfast because breakfast in the hotel was $30 just for bacon and eggs. I found a restaurant which had bacon and eggs for $15, and it opened at 7 am, so I went over there Saturday morning. It was all dark, so I went over to Subway and had a breakfast burrito.

The trip home was long. I think I may have dozed a couple of hours, but they had a chess program on the TV. It allowed setting the difficulty, so I picked 1300, which is my Chess Federation rating, and I easily beat it. I kept increasing it up to 1850, and that gave me a decent game. In the airport and on one leg of my journey, I worked on editing my journals from 2000 through 2009.

Pretty much, I would talk to the people next to me, and often there was an opportunity to talk about the Cs serving their mission in Australia, but the people like the ones in the United States just treated it like something interesting.

A women who sat next to me from Australia to New Zealand was Hungarian. Her mother left Hungary during the revolution during the coldest, most miserable night of the year, since she knew the Russian soldiers would be hiding in their hut next to the stove rather than watching the border. My co-worker V R did the same thing. I told her about T W who served his mission there.

From New Zealand to Los Angeles, I sat next to a woman in her twenties who was going to Corsica to work on a project for her doctorate in Biology. She had just been married a month, and had been married in New Hampshire, United States. Her father owns resorts. Between her marriage and this trip, she’d made another trip to the states—I forget what for.

Australia was very water-conscious. Their toilets had two flush buttons, and many of the places I visited had posters on how they were saving water. The botanic gardens were installing rain capturing devices. There is a river right by it, but the salt content is too high to use that water.

In August, P and I flew to Salt Lake City. D and MA Carpenter picked us up at the airport, and we drove to Provo. S and S moved into a new apartment in Pleasant Grove a couple of weeks ago, and they put us up at their new place. They had returned from Billings and were tired of the small basement apartment with the spiders, and looked for a new place.

We then went to the Mariott Center for the Commencement Exercises. S has earned her Master's degree in Speech Pathology. Elder M. Russell Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve was the keynote speaker. He did not give the usual “graduation speech.” It seems to me that the usual “graduation speeches” aren't really relevant, and he wanted to give us something of value that we could leave feeling that our being there wasn't just “to support so-and-so” in his graduation. He spoke about how we can be more effective with our non-member associates.

J and her apartment roommates were cleaning their apartment last night, and we took them some dinner.

After, we went to Applebees and had a nice dinner together.

The following day we arose and went to the Joseph Smith Field Building for the Convocation, and S was called by name and presented with her degree. After the Convocation, we returned to J's apartment where we did a few final things, and then we went to S's where we had a baked potato bar and played Taboo. There was an ice cream place next door, and we got an ice cream before we left. The customer orders the type of base, the flavors and add-ons, and then they quickly freeze it with liquid nitrogen. I had a rice milk base with cherry and coconut, sweetened with agave. It was very good.

The Cs then drove us to the airport, and dropped P, J, and me. While returning from Salt Lake to Los Angeles, a passenger became ill, and we were diverted to Las Vegas. The paramedics came on-board and she walked off the plane with them. They also told us that we'd make our final destination, and called all passengers to Tucson and several other places to get off the plane, and were were put on flights leaving Las Vegas, and we got home about ninety minutes before we were projected to arrive.

The following day we went to Casa Grand and visited with B's family, and R and C (P's cousin from Canada). We had a good visit with them.