After Borneo it was on to Australia to see my friends in Melbourne and in Canberra, where I lived for two years.

I flew into Melbourne and hired a car at the airport with the intention of getting in a good long 8 hour drive to Canberra. In the international zone (“green zone”) in Baghdad I can drive places, but there are checkpoints every 500 metros so I don’t really get to build up a lot of speed. :)   As many of you know, I love long drives and this was to be one of the highlights of my trip.

I stopped to see a friend for breakfast before heading to Canberra and when departing the very small garage under his apartment building I backed into a concrete post. Now I can give all kinds of explanations and justifications for this – I’d been on a plane for 10 hours; It was the first time driving in Australia (opposite side) in nearly a year; the car park was exceptionally small… etc, etc. But the fact is that I just wasn’t paying attention. I heard it. I felt it. And as I pulled into the street and my friend drove up behind me he pointed at the rear of my vehicle. But I didn’t want to get out and inspect it. It was just too embarrassing, too tragic, and at that point, having been in the country less than 4 hours, I really didn’t want to know how awful it was and how much it was going to cost. You see, I had kicked back the insurance on the hire car. I always do. In my risk analysis, the odds of my getting into an accident don’t justify my paying the incredible insurance amounts that are primarily a money maker for the rental company. It is a risk I have been willing to take and for years it has paid off for me. But now it had all caught up with me.

I spent the first two hours of the drive trying to reconcile myself to the accident and its inevitable cost. I still didn’t know how much damage there was but I was determined to orient my state of mind towards acceptance, regardless of the scope of damage. When I finally did stop for a coffee and inspected the damage I was accepting, but very disappointed. The whole rear bumper and rear hatch/boot door with window would have to be replaced. Cost? Ugh. I didn’t know for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was $2000-2500. The rest of the drive to Canberra was a test of my spiritual fitness. I was determined not to let this incident ruin my holidays. But it was a very tough battle. A bit of logic helped. In considering the fact that I had been rejecting insurance on car hires for years, I figured I had probably saved at least $2000, so in reality this was a net zero incident in the big picture. And I could be grateful that I currently have a job where this amount of money isn’t anywhere near as frightening and devastating as it would have been even last year. But it still sucked.

My week in Canberra was a bit strange. I had attempted to prepare for it by realizing that it could be like a homecoming, or it could be like a high school reunion or a visit to your old school, where you realize you can never go back. It turned out to be a bit of both. It was great to see old friends, but I also felt like a very different person than I was when I lived there and it made for some awkward feelings. I also experienced some very extreme culture shock – which I had not prepared for. I had not been in Western society for nearly eight months and it turned out to be quite a bit more overwhelming than I’d anticipated – the conspicuous consumption, the bling, the advertising, the noise – just a general overstimulation that affected me in ways that I still can’t fully explain. I just felt off-kilter most of the time I was in Australia. This affected my ability to interact with my friends as comfortably as I’d hoped.

My camera broke shortly after I arrived, so I don’t really have any pictures of my Oz adventures. Sorry about that. For those of you that have been following this, this is now the third camera that has broken on me in about a year. I’m really puzzled by it.

I did, however, manage to get a few photos of the new puppy we got for my friend:

After one day with Jed, we decided to go back and get one of his brothers. So now Jed and Jon are keeping my friend Jay very busy and very entertained and loved.

Their papa is a Bull Arab & Mastiff cross and their mama is a Wolfhound – so these guys are going to be massive. I’m very sad that I won’t be able to watch them grow up. By the next time I see them they will probably be full size (shoulders at about my hip)!

After Canberra I went back to Melbourne and then spent a few days out on the Great Ocean Road. It was wonderful to be by the sea. It rained most of the time, which was somewhat distressing for my friend, but was delightful for me. Short of a few brief rain showers in Thailand in April, I hadn’t experienced continuous rain since last December in Washington, DC. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The landscape down there – along the coast from Lorne to the 12 Apostles, but also in the forests and the rolling pasture land – was spectacular and we just drove and drove from one tiny town to the next. It was very relaxing. Well, not the whole time. My friend has the BMW with the most powerful motor there is. And then he got it souped up even more. He doesn’t get to drive it out on the rural roadways much and so he was having fun zooming around and testing the acceleration by punching it to 140 in the 40 zones occasionally. It was fun for the most part, but I did get a little bit of whiplash from the G-force when he didn’t warn me he was going to accelerate.

Walking along the sea was also greatly restorative for me. There is something about it that is so spiritually nurturing.

One of the biggest things I realized in going back to Australia was that Iraq is my home now. I feel it really deeply and I am very keen to get back. I will be landing in Doha soon and will transfer to a short flight to Kuwait. But then I have to wait about 20 hours to catch the next daily flight back to Baghdad. Three weeks of holidays would be considered great by most people, but this is the second one for me and in both cases it has been almost a little too long. But I suppose it is good to be ready to come home.

But Baghdad will be different too. There was lots of staff turnover while I was away – especially in terms of leadership. I’ve got a new supervisor now. So who knows how that will play out. And I know I will come back to a compound where new people who’ve been there just a few weeks, will be treating it with a sense of ownership that will seem odd to me. But the best news is that my gym has re-opened! And I will be able to get back into my Insanity workouts.

My physical and spiritual routines have been disturbed by this holiday to a greater degree than I would have liked. I have learned that this is not good for me and that I need to work harder at maintaining my routines on future R&Rs. I’ve learned lots of things about myself on this trip. In fact, I really do feel like a different person – starting with the rocket attack that hurt my friend, to Borneo, to a variety of circumstances in Canberra and Melbourne – I feel like I’ve become tougher, calmer, more determined, but at the same time more independent, less social, and generally more of loner in many ways. I don’t know. Maybe when I get back to the embassy this won’t seem has severe as it does now. I’ll let you know.

Time to shut down the computer as we prepare to land in Doha. I look forward to returning to the Arab world – to Arabic language and hijab and dishdashas. I don’t know why, but it feels like home to me.

Until next time…

p.s. When I returned the car in Melbourne I was told that I had actually paid for the SPOM plan (the “Super Peace Of Mind” plan) and didn’t have to pay a thing for the damage. Plus, I got $77 back for returning the car early. What do you think of that? :)

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