our life during COVID-19

Terrell Neuage

See ya soon, 1 more day BIG CHANGE - due to omicron & worries about borders we have moved our trip forward by a week - leaving Friday 03 December instead of 09 December. See ya soon, on our (covid) 15-week world tour: Abu Dhabi (UAR), Lahore Pakistan, Istanbul Turkey, Washington DC, New York City, Oneonta New York, Nieuwerkerk aan den Ijssel & Utrecht Netherlands - return to Australia late March 2022 [what could possibly go wrong]

#DailyThoughts as of 02 December 2021
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Leaving Australia 'Again': Before the After Read the first 45 pages for free
available on these devices (Amazon author page)

Blog & new ramblings on substack

PhD thesis > 'Conversational Analysis of Chatroom Talk: Online Discourse Analysis' Method Kindle Edition

We have made it to Thursday 02 December 2021 8 am (DST) South Australia
HAPPY 74TH BIRTHDAY TO ME one-hundred-fifteen days ago

Three days after booster..22nd. a bit sore arm first day, now not, same with Narda. No other reaction. No more updates to this as it is a non-event, except that we are now ready to travel the world. See you soon.

Getting our booster today November 19th - Pfizer. Will give an update tomorrow and day after how we feel. A couple of weeks shy of six-months but want to have it befor going to Lahore Pakistan in 20-days.

One week after major surgery - November 18th - still feeling a bit crap. 21 days before we leave for Lahore - should be fine by then.

Nice to be home - November 13th - after three days in hospital. We celebrated by purchasing our DC to NYC Amtrak ticket end of December and a couple of nights including New Year's Eve in NYC then a train up to Albany on New Year's Day - renting a car, driving over to my sister in Oneonta for a few days then train back to NYC - Washington DC for a couple of weeks before going over to the Netherlands for two months. Sidenote: medical here in Adelaide is great. Hospital is great, not crowded, groovy nurses, food rather crap, everything including surgery went well. Now to recover.

Last day updating this for the rest of this week as I go into hospital for surgery tomorrow morning, Thursday, the 11th of the 11th month (cosmic huh?) @ 6.30 AM. They reckon if all goes well, I should be out sometime Saturday or Sunday. Not looking forward to it, but what is life if we don't have these events? Cheers. Three weeks before going overseas too.

RECEIVED MY USA PASSPORT RENEWAL TODAY 05 November - backstory > I realized three weeks ago that my USA passport had expired. I had not used it for three years and had forgotten about it. I used my Australian passport for the last few trips in Europe and Asia. I only need my USA passport to get into the States. Online it said expect 6 – 8 weeks to get it which would have meant I would not have it in time to go on this trip as we are leaving December 09 for Lahore and to DC Christmas Eve. Amazingly the US passport renewal came from Melbourne within two weeks. Thanks Melbourne US Consulate.

GOT OUR VISA FOR PAKISTAN TODAY (November 1) two more hurdles to get over yet...

BIG NEWS - in our world... we bought our tickets to Lahore yesterday (Ethihad) - ) the 21st of October, leaving Australia December 09. The first day that Australia opened internationally. So, we are off to 'the wedding' on the 18th of December in Lahore, will tell more of the family member that is for soon... then to DC for Christmas...see below.

Just paid for our next segments: Lahore - Istanbul - Washington DC arriving Christmas Eve in DC (Turkish Airlines) and in January to Holland (United). We got up in the middle of the night - 2 AM, unable to sleep, and bought the DC to Amsterdam segment. We will deal with getting back to Australia in the future - once/if we get to Holland...so much can go wrong. We lost the trip in 2020 (including Queen Mary II Hamburg to NYC, Amtrak DC to Chicago for a month...) then this year we bought tickets to New Zealand for two months - then of course they closed the borders last month. Hopefully, this will work.

Doing well. South Australia looks as if they will be opening borders soon. International borders open to us as of Novemeber 1...We are looking/booking international trips - will tell all soon (Pakistan - Washington DC - The Netherlands = 3 months away December - March, if Australia will grant leave.). For now, we go to Aqua Zumba most mornings - ride our e-bikes through our hilly suburb and to the wooded bike trails not too far away. Life is good. Cheers

03 October This morning our power was off - reportage outage for another three-hours. I had to make instant coffee on our gas burner - our beaut coffee maker-foaming hot milk apparatus being electricity did not go on. Yesterday, as we do every other day, we went to our aqua Zumba class and to the gym.

We live in South Australia. The other states have all sorts of lockdowns. My son in Melbourne as all others cannot go to the gym - we on the other hand have been going throughout the Covid-19 thingy. How lucky! Re. the power outage - very rare. I don't even remember the last time it was down. I still power up my computer via battery - I still have Wi-Fi on my computer via Personal Hotspot from my latest magical phone. I still have coffee, how be it, not as nice as the espresso machine. Life is wonderful. I am so sorry for the rest of the world where power is often non-existence, where coffee is a once long-ago dream, where lockdown keeps people within their neighbourhood (like the rest of Australia) where life is just so difficult. So lucky to live in Adelaide - why don't you come and stay with us. The caravan is like a spare house, we have a large tent to put up in the backyard for the rest of you. Life is good here. We would love to share it with you.

In the meantime, read my book ‘Leaving Australia’ Book 1 or Book 2. Thanks mate!

She was a carefree flower girl of 18
Selling flowers on Bourbon Street
1968
I was a street artist...

(August 2021) Back home in Adelaide, South Australia - after months in Queensland we went home via Northern Territory as the New South Wales & Victoria & Queensland broders were closed to South Australia. An extra 2500 kilometres + to get home. And surprise of all - I have made it to 74 years old and fifty-two days past. Ti Tree Roadhouse (27/07), Stayed @ the incredible Devils Marbles, Territory one night (26/07). @ Barkly Homestead Northern Territory 25th July - deep in the Outback, Camooweal Billabong for two days - what an amazing place, Mt Isa, caravan park for one night after 12 nights of free camping. Stayed two nights @ the amazing and beautiful Corella Dam, Cloncurry July 20/21, previously @ Julia Creek, Queensland, Julia Creek FREE RV Camping, Campaspe River Rest Area, Homestead (17-July...quiet away from humans but next to a train track), Ball Beach, Queensland, Australia - amazing beaches - staying at Ball Beach free campground - day seven. Bowen (Whitsundays) (09 July) Home Hill, (06-08 July) - staying at the old showgrounds, riding our bikes around this interesting town - a few days to chill, Rollingstone, Vincent Parker Park for a few days - beautiful place...
Babinda Rotary Park...our third day here in pouring rain - no let up - river rising...covid restrictions across Queensland so we may be here awhile

We are now both fully vaccinated. yippie hippies.

In Cairns this week. Three weeks ago I got my second jab (The AstraZeneca) in Cairns - no reaction yet, just a bit of a sore arm...yippie - now to find somewhere to travel..We can't go back home as we are next in New South Wales and our homestate, South Australia's border is closed to New South Wales so it may be a long time before we return. But hey, I am shot-up. Only 24-hours with no reaction but they say it is between 4 - 30 days so I will see. Towns araound us are closing down then opening - every day sees so many changes - happily camping away from people. cheers

Beautiful camping @ Atherton War Memorial Campgrounds for past three days. Now at Ringers Rest Camping, Mareeba for four days.

Stopping at the Ravenshoe Steam Railway Caravan Park for a few days to catch up with life. Will write up our travels thus far in the next few days and toss it to neuage.me - our official blog. We drove into the local rain forest yesterday and went to the Tully Gorge and Millstream Falls, Ravenshoe, Queensland Australia see our two-minute video.

internet is only available in towns which are few and far between. Very weak at that barely enough to post this. Doing free camping somewhere along the way tonight. - catching up on writing - videos - daydreaming - unwinding...

Last week - overnight @ Pemrose Caravan Park, Silverton - not far from Broken Hill. Dinner at Silverton Hotel last night. Looking at the mines and the Mad Max Museum today...they filmed lots of movies here including Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. Also filmed here (there are a lot of others) Razorback, the TV miniseries version of A Town Like Alice, The Adventures Of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert and Mission: Impossible II.

Our video - Daydream Mine, Silverton, NSW, Australia 02/06/2021

Films that have been filmed in and around Silverton over the years.

A commercial is shot in Silverton every few months. There are too many to mention, but some of the some of the companies to shoot the landscape include the British Lions, Panasonic, Landrover, Telstra, Coca Cola, West End Beer, Dove Soap, Hyundai, Mercedes Benz, Pajero, Ampol, Pennzoil, Smiths Chips, Gatorade, Pepsi, and Master Card.

We did the Day Dream Mine tour - our video - Daydream Mine, Silverton, we will blog that story later - also lots of video and photos. We are on our way tomorrow so whenever we settle again the videos will be edited, photos tossed about and lots to say. It will get posted on both our blog at neuage.me and my rambllings over at substack... and videos over on our youtube channel, and probably stuff on twitter and facebook and instagram....

We got our times mixed up; sunset at 5.39 pm - our phones said 5 pm when we left, apparently here is on NSW time and it was 5.30... we got to the Mundi Mundi Lookout at 5.43 and got to see the last bit of it.

Our first night of our three-month trip - Burra Showgrounds... unpowered site...5C very cold.
Leaving this morning, Monday the 31st 7 AM to Broken Hill and into the Outback...

how we see the world today 2021 ~~ neuageVIEW twenty years and more ago
youtube videos - (Melbourne - background music coming soon)

current books by Terrell Neuage

Bought our tickets for three-weeks to New Zealand in September - October this year. Hopefully, the bubble between our two countries holds. Today we began our three-month caravan trip across Australia. For now, we will avoid Victoria which is closing down due to three or four covid cases. We will go straight up through Broken Hill - NSW and into Queensland as far North as possible. My next covid injection is for the end of June and we have it booked in for Cairns Queensland. Hope to see some of you all along the way. If not maybe in New Zealand. The last time I was in New Zealand was in 1980 when I went there from Baltimore Maryland USA for an astrological conference. It has probably changed a bit.

In South Australia, the nanny state, we have a COVID QR-code reader on our phone. Every shop/business/building we go into has a “COVID SAfe Check-In, to enhance contact tracing and keep our community COVID safe. If someone in South Australia tests positive to COVID-19, the COVID SAfe Check-In enables SA Health to quickly contact others who may have been exposed to the virus and stop the spread of COVID-19.”
Yesterday they closed a whole shopping centre, locking everyone inside, to check that everyone had signed in; either on their phone or had handwritten their phone # and name. The fine for not doing so is $1000 to the individual and $5000 to the business. We were at the grandchildren’s netball game yesterday – outdoors – and a person came around checking that we had signed in…for an outdoor event.
Sometimes Narda and I forget to sign in but now that there are plainclothes police in places, we are much more vigilant. It is annoying but with that no one wears mask – we still try to social distance and scrub up at home and everywhere has lots of sanitization stuff to smear over various body parts so life in general is normal and good.
That is life in South Australia

With a bit of "extra" time (we have 32-hour days here in South Australia) I have been 'fixing' pages I did back in the 1990s of my "picture-poem" series. Starting here. Many links were broken over the past 20+ years. It takes time but as we are only going to aqua fittness in the morning - riding our new e-bikes for an hour and getting the caravan ready for our 3-month trip across Australia to warmer northern Queensland starting June 1st... I am getting as many of these pages done as possible. There are probably more than a thousand...I was very busy with internet stuff in the 1990s as my PhD was on that.

What we love about these e-bikes is that we peddle along as always; however, when coming to a hill we can put the e-stuff on and there is a setting 1-5, dependant on the hill, and we go up it as if we were on a straight road with the e-assistance. We live in a hilly area. In the past we would drive to the flat area of Adelaide and ride bike paths. Now every day we ride down the hill to the shops and easily ride back home. We have named our bikes Jack and Jill as they love to go up the hill.

We got our Pajero truck (Billy) back after waiting six-weeks for a part from China. Up to last week we were taking buses everywhere - to the gym, shops, grandchildren, movies... now we have a new car, new e-bikes (started riding them yesterday - what a dream... living in a hilly area - WOW, and now our truck. So many modes of transport to choose from. This means we can hook up the caravan (Holiday) to our truck (Billy) and go cross country to Northern Queensland starting first of June (2021) which was our plan months ago before Billy ended up in hospital waiting for parts from China. Yippie!

Took the 'Overland' for the day (12-hours) Melbourne - Adelaide (and back - obviously...). We have been following 'The Man in seat 61' for worldwide train travels for many years. He has a section on The Overland.

In Melbourne - bought two Jordaan+ Lekker electric bikes as they were not available in South Australia. They will be sent over in the next two weeks - very excited.

Just another American (living in Australia) in his seventies who got his first covid shot (astrazeneca vaccine) – Tuesday morning the 30th of March. No side effects - a bit of a sore spot on my arm where the needle went in - that went away soon after, but no other stuff. Joining the many millions of Yanks and the few Australians to get this process started so we can visit you soon. Narda must wait awhile – too young.

NOTE: "The AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine uses an adenovirus, in this case a monkey virus that the human immune system doesn't recognize." Since getting the shot I have been eating more bananas - how about you?

Wednesday the 14th April got my flu shot and the Prevnar 13® shot - sore arm but some more protection.[for the prevention of pneumococcal pneumonia and invasive disease caused by 13 Streptococcus pneumoniae strains (1, 3, 4, 5, 6A, 6B, 7F, 9V, 14, 18C, 19A, 19F, and 23F].
previous youtube channel (stories prior to 2013)
video - (ties in isolation)

life @ our home in Adelaide Australia ~~ neuageVIEW twenty years and more ago

Our current covid-19 status (Narda and me) @ - we arrived in Adelaide after 10 weeks in the Netherlands [March 2020 - now last year] on flights back via Amsterdam and Singapore. We have been given amazing help with a home in Swan Reach along the Murray River where we did our quarantine of two weeks in Adelaide until the 8th of April 2020.

As of 02 Decemberwe feel good. If you are in Pakistan, East Coast USA, The Netherlands, December (2021) > March (2022) we will pop in. Cheers. Fully vaccinated X 3.

The other day we went to the movies - saw Peter Rabbit with the grandchildren - almost fell to sleep: either because they wear us out or the movie was that boring. Preferred 'Nomadland' which we saw without children. Really a top flick - We consider ourselves grey-nomads travelling about Australia in our caravan - though we have a nice home to come back to and each other so not the same as the movie but still the thought of living the rest of our life on the road is thinkable.

We bought a new MG - can't come to visit you so we bought this - also, our truck is in the shop and the parts to fix it are held up in China - could be months before we get it back and take our caravan across Australia which was our plan. At least we have a car.

Sitting at my desk and watching the magpies in the backyard visiting (click to enlarge):

Always good to have my son, Sacha, come over from Melbourne to visit for a few days. What a life we have lived..."Leaving Australia, 'Again’: Book 2 ‘After’"

Book 2 tells the journey of being a male single parent in a foreign country. I tell the path that took one son all the way to being a pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers to his death and the path of my other son from a difficult adolescence to a well-integrated human. My own path took me from being a high school drop out to a PhD and teaching at universities and seven years as a tofu manufacturer amongst many other attempts at finding a place in life.

1981 Honolulu, Hawaii - 'and so it began'

We are currently home in Adelaide after three weeks in Darwin. We are acting out our ususal 'living like a local' meaning we go to aqua fitness classes - see how we see the world today Planning for our next trip which will be taking the caravan over to Queensland and touring the Outback May - October. Yesterday we saw the movie 'Blackbird' with Kate Winslet. We do aqua zumba and aqua fittness three times a week and lots of weights, keeping fit.

PS...I still love you

We recently took a five-week drive to the New South Wales coast, camping in our caravan - see our blog uploaded just the other day @ https://neuage.me/.

Last year (2020) I unpacked a box of ties that I used to collect from thrift shops around the world while teaching in: New York, China, Australia between 2002 and 2018. With being stuck at home I decided to wear a different tie everyday. 183 of them. 183 days non-stop. Travels with my ties became ties in isolation.

We do have a short covid story / A cautionary tale from when my son Sacha came to Adelaide from Melbourne recently.

cheers!