...и, любопытства ради, проснуться лет чрез сто

This week was the Moon Festival, mid-autumn in the northern hemisphere, a harvest festival celebrated in Chinese culture and among its aficionados for about 3000 years. Due to the use of the lunisolar calendar, the event can be anywhere from mid-September to early October when a full moon is present. Last year it was around the former, this year the latter. The weather permitting, it is often held outside with friends and family, which is meant to coincide with the harvest gathering. Making and sharing mooncakes is one of the hallmark traditions of this festival; last year I made some, a fairly complex process, this year I received some from the Consulate, which I took to Anthony and Robin's where, joined with Matthew, we had a little festival of our own and imbibed several glasses of Maotai; at 53% that stuff is like rocket fuel, but doesn't have bad effects the following day. The following evening, I had a second Moon Festival with Kate, where we engaged in the dice game of Bo Bing, one of the many games of celebration held at such festivities.

There are several additional parts of the tradition that I find particularly charming. One is the reflection on distant friends who, although not present, will be gazing at the same moon at the same time as you are. Another is the opportunity for especially close friends to express their fondest desires and greatest dreams to each other, although one imagines that sometimes that can result in a bitter harvest, so to speak. But perhaps my favourite is reciting one of the variations of the story of the goddess Chang'e, whom the festival is named after. The version I tell recites how she drank an elixir of immortality and flew to the moon, becoming the moon goddess. Her heroic but still mortal partner, the archer Hou Yi, made mooncakes to show how much he missed her; talk about shooting for the moon. Chang'e would later be joined by a rabbit who had been exiled by the Jade Emperor for surrendering the elixir of immortality to the Queen of the West.

I did take the opportunity this year to reflect on distant and absent friends and on the new harvest from the last celebration. Despite some significant disappointments, I am more than satisfied with how this year has progressed so far. I also have my eye on an even more involved and interesting twelve months in the future, which involves a fairly significant life change. It is not something that I am prepared to discuss publicly, but those whom I have told know of its importance. I have already observed some sadness among you with the realisation of what this change will entail, but remember that no matter where we are this time next year, we will be gazing at the same moon and in celebration.

Although the trip to South America and Antarctica for Kate and me is two months away, there have been a few progressive and positive changes as that date nears. The first is a very recent decision from Chile that Australian passport holders no longer require a tourist visa for stays up to 90 days. That is quite beneficial, as there are a couple of visits to said country on the itinerary, including the capital, Santiago, and Punta Arenas in Tierra del Fuego. The second was a visit to the Travel Doctor-TMVC for a few various vaccines and boosters in preparation for the trip, of which the Yellow fever vaccine was most notable. I still had my WHO vaccine card from the last time I visited said clinic over twenty years ago for my first trip to Timor-Leste, and have carried it around with my passport ever since!

A third update is a decision by yours truly to flesh out the itinerary for various cities and towns that we're visiting that's not part of the standard tour. Unsurprisingly, this will include over fifty museums, art galleries, theatres, historic buildings and the like, which this lover of art and beauty cannot ignore, no matter what country I visit. Said locales include Santiago, Lima, Cusco, Buenos Aires, Punta Arenas, Ushuaia, Stanley, and Montevideo, so if any readers have recommendations they are very welcome. What I haven't done yet is work out what to do on the several days on the cruise ship from Buenos Aires to Antarctica and return, which I suspect will be quite boring, and I'll end up spending most of my time either in the theatre, gym, or dining. Fortunately, a deck plan is available.

Finally, with some prior learning and a great deal of recent interest, I have spent a good amount of time building my Spanish language skills in recent months to the point that I feel fairly comfortable with B1 CEFR level communication. Most of this has been through Duolingo, as always. However, being of a certain age, I have also joined and enrolled in the Spanish language and literature classes conducted by the Melbourne city University of the Third Age. I must confess I prefer the current French title (which the concept originated in 1973) as "Union Française des Universités de Tous Ages". Still, each body is independent and makes its own rules, and I rather suspect I'm going to enjoy this environment.