Culprits: Pigeons and DHL

Things have changed.

First off, some Pigeons have taken to sitting in my window box. (You fix up the place and the riff raff move in…) They have pecked off the last few attempts at leaves from the Begonia, so it is well and truly gone now, and have also crushed my Lavender plant.
See? Note the “begonia” on the right.
Compare to 2 months ago here.

This little experiment is going badly.

Also, I was really excited about Cambodia and Thailand, but that is just not going to occur. The fates conspired against me. When I made the reservation in November, my corporate travel service needed to issue me paper tickets due to the number of carriers. They mailed these to me via DHL. Through over 20 phone calls with DHL, I learned that the package was successfully delivered TO SOME OTHER ADDRESS. Despite sometimes saying they had retrieved it and would deliver it the next day, they were never actually able to get their hands on it. By the time I gave up on them I had let it get too late.

Basically now, due to systematic reasons it’s too late to get me another paper ticket and everything is full for a new ticket because SE Asia is so popular a travel destination from Australia for the holidays. Farewell Thailand and Cambodia. Canceling all those hotels and eating the cost of my internal flight from Bangkok to Phuket, which is nonrefundable.

So I needed to get travel plans for someplace that was not booked up for Christmas in a short period of time. Thanks to Jess, Steven and their well traveled roommate Gary, for helping me work through the options.

Now I’m going to Johannesburg and Cape Town South Africa instead. Should be totally different, and I am grieving all the plans I made for Cambodia and Thailand, but this should be good too. I’ll tell you all about it. I got a new memory card for my camera for pictures of Table Mountain.

Finally, a quick mailbag update: Thanks to Santa for my new cleats, Mom for the box of cookies, chocolates and goodies, Dad for the annual Kelly family holiday letter, Kim Koo for the Christmas card and photo and Mara for the Thank you note. Merry Christmas everyone!