Down Under

We're in Asia, of course, or at least we've been there, maybe having travelled back and forth across the Bosphorus from Europe to Asia a few times by now, making it three continents I've visited, and it would have been four, the same number as Baleen, had this vacation been the week before.

My boss is in Australia for a work trip, where I'd be were I not here. Baleen says not to worry, that I'll make it to Australia for another deal or we'll go there together sometime, but I'm not so sure. Baleen doesn't share my concern, nor is she sympathetic as she thinks it's sweet justice of a sort because I never read The Kelly Gang, despite what she says were not so subtle recommendations for three years.

You see, Baleen visited Australia by herself over Thanksgiving in 2008, six months after we'd started dating, on the trip she learned that I was the one, she says, as for the first time in her life, this solitary swimmer felt like she'd rather not be where she was, but with me. She even called me on her cell phone while I was in Austin with my family, where I talked to Baleen at a tailgate outside the UT stadium, but could still hear my mom tell somebody she'd just met, "That's his girlfriend. She's calling from Australia." And in Australia, Baleen did what I would have done, which is walk into a bookshop and ask what one book an American should read to tell her about Australia in fiction. She even read it on that trip, front to back, and told me all about it when she came back, and thought that I'd certainly read it that week, or maybe the next one. But that week passed, and that month, and the months after that with The Kelly Gang still on the shelf, and Baleen mentioning in less and less, it seemed, then hardly at all until a few weeks ago, when I first complained to her about the timing of this Australia trip.