Life is not a box of chocolates

It was early in my relationship with my wife that I came to learn the number of Tim Tam chocolate biscuits there are in a pack. Eleven. Cynically I believe that prime number was chosen so that there is no chance of being able to share the pack evenly amongst any number of people.

And the sharing of a pack was what brought me to understand how my wife and myself were different at a fundamental level. Sylvia believed it was "5 for me and 5 for you and one to share".

I had growin up in a situation of "the person who eats the fastest gets the most".

And that probably outlines my approach to life right now. Life is not a box of chocolates - it's a pack of Tim Tams, and the more I can take right now the more I will get. The future will take care of itself.

The weather is good and I'm headed out to Langhorne Creek to do some more skydives. There are about a dozen people who believe I should be doing something else - something that more directly benefits them.

But I'm here to eat my pack of Tim Tams, not so much to provide chocolate biscuits for everybody who demands them of me.

But my greatest pleasure is doing things for other people where I feel like I had a choice in the matter. Sharing my pack of Tim Tams.

Life sure is a pack of Tim Tams.

The significance - to me - of Veuve Clicquot

I grow more and more like my mum, particularly in the way I tell the same story over and over and forget that I've told it. So my sister probably had heard this story before she gave me a bottle of 2008 vintage Veuve.

I once bought a bottle of the lovely French champagne and promised myself that as soon as I learnt of the death of a certain past associate, then I'll pop the cork immediately wherever I was.

There was no reason to believe this past associate was going to die anytime soon - I just relished the idea.

The significance of this is that it helped me recognise that hate imprisons a person. It's like swallowing poison and hoping that the other person dies from it.

So the significance is the freedom that I received a few years later when I casually popped the cork with some students in a celebration of their study.

That horrid nemisis is as alive and as well as ever although - I expect - living their own hell on the inside. However I too am alive and well, as well as being free.

Little India Back to Where it All Began

Singapore traveling for work is about to come to an end. It has been great and I wish I could go for longer. But nothing lasts forever

And tonight I missed my flight. So after two and a half hours of dithering around the airport I am back in a taxi on the way into Singapore Central at 1.30am. Now I really miss my family.

And because I am paying for my own accommodation I will be at the Hotel 81. Just as it was when I was trying to make a dollar stretch when I was working on a Singapore wine retail project.

Another arc that brings me home again. I think I only have one more trip to Singapore left. And that saddens me a little.

$8 of water

We are shipping plastic around the country. Bizarre. And I'm a part of the problem.