02- All a Matter of Perspective

This is mine. Story, and of course, perspective, that is. Julia, Jackie and Derek – and of course Nanny – will have a completely different slant on things, but that's them.

Here's mine.

At some point, suddenly, unexpectedly, like a tropical low in the Coral Sea developing into a cyclone to change the lives of inhabitants of the area, the idea of running over to the islands – Hawai`ian – with Jackie and Derek and Nanny for a spell sort-of grew out of nothing into this really cool idea. Add the wedding in New Zealand of young Jenna to Cameron to this and you have a very interesting holiday planned... and then, there's the spice of the unexpected. Like:

• an insect – horsefly – bite
• a cyclone – Marcia
• expensive sightseeing courtesy of taxi driver who choses afternoon CBD traffic
• a bizarre absence of mirrors in a place you're staying
• and a taxi driver who asks you – the visitor to the area – how to get to your destination because she has no idea where it is or how to use her GPS to find it

The latter experience was, as Holmes would have put it, a bit recherché. I lost the plot on that last one too: couldn't get my head around the fact that the taxi driver, this frail little aunty who knew how to drive, but beyond that, nothing, didn't know where she was going in Honolulu.

Too weird. Three-thirty in the morning, we were dropped off at Thomas's massive building called the Hawai`ian Monarch or something (Niu St) and sat listening to (enduring the throbbing of) techno-rock blasting from the nightclub near the lobby. Inauspicious beginnings, but hey, lets back up a bit, shall we?