Exhaustion

Well this was a new experience.  It was a level of exhaustion I hadn't experienced before.  I had done all nighters before (for both work and fun), I had been through physical challenges in the past that meant a lack of sleep... but this?  This was an ongoing level of hammering that was wearing away at my resistance.  The first few nights had been fine, with baby still sleeping even if for a shorter period through the night.  Now, we experiencing him waking every few hours.

He was just a baby.  I couldn't blame him for any of this.  It was just a part of the natural cycle of things.  Still, it did mean that I was completely and utterly shattered during the days.  The paternity leave entitlements in Hong Kong were far from generous, so I also found myself in the unenviable position of having to go to work each day after having spent most of the evening feeding and soothing the crying child.

When I managed to calm him.  To put him to bed.  That feeling of success and satisfaction was hard to beat.  Yet it was probably just as much to do with relief at knowing I could get a couple of hours of extra sleep.

A baby photoshoot

 Veronica was completely enamoured with Pickle.  He was so small and delicate.  She wanted to capture every moment of his life.  Our phones were filling up fast with photos and videos, but more was still needed.

Professional support was needed to satisfy Veronica's requirements.  She found a studio online that did at home visits to do baby photoshoots.  I wasn't sure how I felt about it all.  It seemed all a bit much.  I loved having Pickle in our lives, but did we need to go to these lengths to capture these early moments of his life?

We probably didn't, but like with many things in life, "need" is a strong word.  We may not need many things, but that doesn't mean that they aren't nice to have.  The pictures came out well.  The photographers seemed to be baby whisperers, able to calm and sooth at all times, which resulted in some incredible pictures.

A new arrival

I had restless night.

It was nothing compared to what Veronica was going through, but I still felt exhausted.  My friend Christoph had been kind enough to let me crash at his place close to the hospital, so I tried to sleep.  I put the phone next to my head and closed my eyes.  I expected to be woken with a call, but nothing came.  After a few hours of sleep, I woke up and made my way back to the hospital.  Even without the call, I preferred to be there with Veronica.

At the hospital, there was still no major change.  Veronica had barely slept and was still waiting.  I sat in the same cafe downstairs and kept waiting until the call finally came that she was being moved into the delivery ward and that I could finally join her.  I packed up my things and moved up quickly to the private room where she had been moved in anticipation of the labour starting.

Inside the labour room, we were still waiting.  Veronica paced around, the pain of the contractions still intense but with no further dilation.  A doctor had come to induce her and to break her water, but there still didn't seem to be any major progress.  I tried to comfort her as much as I could.  One of the nurses came and suggested some deep tissue massages in her lower back to help ease her pain.  Between us, we took turns massaging her back to try to give her some relief.  The nurses left, and I was alone with her as I tried my best to comfort her through the painful contractions.  Baby had decided that the best place to rest his head was on the base of her spine , so every contraction was doubly painful.  The nurse came back to check.  A sudden flurry of activity began as the nurse declared with surprise that Veronica had gone from being barely dilated to now suddenly being fully dilated.  The baby was coming.

The nurses ushered me out of the main area and onto a seat to the side as they prepared the room for the birth.  The bed was changed and Veronica was helped into a better position.  Once ready, I was led back in to be by her side.  I took her by her hand as she began the process of labour.  Something so many people have gone through before, something so intrinsically part of who we are as humans, and yet something which is so foreign and unique an experience to the uninitiated.   

The intensity and the pain that Veronica went through was incredible to witness and to be near.  It was an emotional experience as I tried to encourage and support her as best as I could from my position to the side.  I held her hand.  I spoke as many words of support as I could think of.  I helped her count.  The nurses urged me to be vocal in my support and so I took on as much of a coaching role as I could.  It seemed apt.  I gave her timing instructions.  I helped her with her pacing.  I gave her unwavering moral support.  What more could I do?  I was deeply invested in this and yet I felt incredibly impotent and powerless through it all.  There was ultimately nothing I could really do.  This was something Veronica had to go through alone, with all of us mere bystanders hoping to be of some minor help.

The time went quickly.  It went very quickly.  From when I was ushered out and then back in, it was only forty minutes.  In that short time, it was done.  With one final push and with the firm hands of the midwife, a new life sprang into our world.  A gentle cry started, with eyes closed and in shock.  I felt a huge wave of emotion.  It was a powerful experience to have gone through.  The nurses checked Veronica, the doctor came to make sure everything was fine and to check the baby.

Then the baby was brought to his mother, placed immediately on her chest.  The warmth and the sound of her heart instantaneously soothed him.

It had been nine months.  Now we would commence the next part of our lives together.
 

Waiting for a new arrival

The baby was coming.  It was very clear that he would be slightly earlier than expected so we needed to go the hospital.  Veronica had been experiencing some terrible nights sleep and by the morning, her contractions had started and were becoming frequent.  At each contraction, she froze in pain and had to lay down.  It was difficult to watch, with nothing I could do to help her other than to offer my support.  I grabbed our prepared bags and we made our way to the hospital.  There, Veronica was quickly admitted to the prenatal care ward.  She wasn't quite ready to be moved to the room for labour yet.  So we would have to wait.  With her being in this prenatal care ward, it meant that I could only stay during the designated visiting times. So instead, I found myself a cafe to camp myself and to wait.

I tried to do some work, to clear up as much as possible as I waited.  It was a strange time.  Full of nervousness, anticipation, and anxiety.  Through all of this, I also felt a sense of complete powerlessness.  As with Veronica's pain, there was nothing I could really do.  Even my ability to be physically close to her as she struggled with this final phase of the pregnancy was now taken from me and I was reduced to being a distant player.

I walked around the grounds of the hospital a bit.  I tried to stay calm and rational.  The fresh air helped, but I thought it best to keep my busy so I went back to the cafe and worked.  There wasn't anything else I could do, so I used this time to deal with open work matters and to close things off as much as I could before the baby's arrival.

Once the evening visiting hours arrived, I rushed back upstairs to be with Veronica.  She had been suffering but was still it seemed no where close to labour.  I waited with her.  We walked around the ward together and as I tried to provide her with as much comfort as possible.  The nurse checked her again close to when it was time for me to go.  There was still a lot of time to wait.  She told me that I should go and find somewhere to get some sleep, she even said that it wasn't time yet for me to be pacing in the hallway!  I wanted to stay close, so I called a friend who lived nearby and arranged to crash at his place.

Pavlova Christmas

I was over the moon to have won 4kg of passionfruit from Cheese Club.  Over the last few years, they had continued to grow in Hong Kong and Asia.  I was a big fan of their service and it made buying dairy products far more affordable in Hong Kong.  Their success had also led them to expand into other areas such as fruit.  With the Christmas period in full swing, they had launched a series of giveaways.  I had signed up to everything I could, and the win of the fruit was a very pleasant surprise.

Still, with 4kg of passionfruit, I needed to think of what to do with it all.  The fruit themselves were delicious, probably the best passionfruit I had ever eaten, but I still had too much of it to just casually eat day to day.

Since it was a festive time, it seemed that the best use of it would be for a pavlova.  This cake from my childhood that seemed to be the specialty of every grandma in Australia was still a favourite.  Making a pavlova was easy, but making a good one usually took a bit more effort and concentration.  I had a good recipe, and now that I had the fruit it seemed to be the perfect time.

Fully decorated, it is a thing of beauty.  After our dinner, Veronica's family all took a slice and quickly embraced it.  Who doesn't love a good pav?

Heavy rains

The typhoon had come and gone.  So Hong Kong was now back to normal.

Well that's what we all thought.

Instead we were all in for a big surprise.  As I prepared for bed one night, I could hear the rain outside.  It had been wet since the typhoon, so this wasn't anything out of the ordinary.  The rain was getting heavier.  I could hear the rain coming down hard.  It was still nothing out of the ordinary.  Heavy rain can be common in Hong Kong, so much so that there's a system of warnings in place at the Hong Kong Observatory to warning people when it gets too much.  I didn't think much of it as I lay in bed and closed my eyes.  I could still hear the heavy rain.  It was actually quite a soothing sound and I was soon asleep.

I woke up to the sound of rain.

I wasn't sure if I had slept.  The rain sounded as heavy as it had been when I had fallen asleep.  I wondered if it was still early or if I had only been asleep a short time.  I looked at my clock.  There was no mistake, I had slept the full night and it was the morning.  I thought that maybe it was just a coincidence that the rain had been at its heaviest when I slept and when I woke.  Strangely, in the back of my mind I did wonder whether the heavy rain had persisted through the night.

I stepped out of bed and looked out the window. 

It hadn't been a coincidence.  It had indeed rained heavily all night.  We were to find out later that this had been the heaviest rain that Hong Kong had ever experienced.  It was a once in 500 year event that had completely saturated the city and left flooding all over.  There was reports and videos of landslides, flooded buildings and general mayhem.

By mid morning, the waters had started to recede.  Veronica and I went downstairs to look for food and to investigate our surroundings more thoroughly.  Everywhere there was mess and filth.  The flooding had brought with it all the dust and dirt in the city, and caked it all over the roads and sidewalks.

At one drain, we found the remains of an early morning noodle delivery.  It must have been left in front of a restaurant by the delivery drivers only to be carried away by the flooding that came later.

As we turned the corner, we found the biggest sign yet of the true severity of this event.  The local McDonalds, the store that never closes no matter how bad the typhoon, had been shut down by the flood.  Being in the basement of the building, we could only imagine how bad the flooding downstairs had been.  Many of the shops and buildings in Hong Kong are raised a "step", which is normally more than enough to deal with the usual heavy monsoon rains.

This was a different case altogether, and the flooding had gone above that first step which meant a long and expensive clean up for many of the ground and basement stores throughout the city.

Amazingly, the resilience of this city was such that by the afternoon, I could already hear the rumbling of the trams rolling along the routes that had been flooded only hours earlier.

Super typhoon days

It had been years since we had felt in the "typhoon mood".   There had been a few big ones since Mangkhut, but none of them had seemed to impact the city in the same way.  The shut downs that normally come with the typhoons had been short.  The coming of Typhoon Saola seemed like a return to the old days.  The observatory had been warning about it for days in the lead up, with a direct hit on Hong Kong predicted.  Everyone seemed to be awaiting its arrival with a strange nervous anticipation.  It was hitting on Friday and there seemed to be a city wide assumption and agreement that there would be no work done that day.  When the T10 was raised Thursday evening, no one was surprised and everyone was already well prepared for the Friday of work from home.  Shops had been cleared out and everyone had stocked up on the essentials for a weekend in.

The storm started to hit and hit hard.  The city was still shutdown, but it seemed to not be too bad outside.  We went out at lunch for some food and we could see some trees had already born the brunt of the winds. 

We were hungry, so we went and partook in some McDonalds.  Even with everything else is closed, McDonalds seems to somehow stay open during the worst typhoons.  I remember also eating McDonalds the last time there was such a big shutdown.

By the afternoon of the next day, it was gone and the city began the assessment of the damage done.

The worst of it hadn't lasted that long, but there was damage everywhere.  It didn't seem too serious, but trees had been felled and there was garbage and debris scattered everywhere.

What was most amazing though was that everything seemed to be restarting already.  Only a few hours had past since the warning signals had been lowered and everyone was already getting on with their lives.  Chainsaws roared everywhere as the clean up crews were busily dealing with the trees.  We had a farewell dinner planned that night for Rachel.  We had been worried it would be cancelled and yet it all still went forward without a hitch.

Beaches and Isola Bella

Taormina isn't actually on the beach.  You wouldn't necessary guess that with the videos you see of people lazing by the water on the beach whenever there are shows based in the town.  Instead the town sits far up in the hills and along the cliffs that overlook the long stretch of the Sicilian coast line.  From the high vantage point of the town, you can see far off into the distance, as far as the southern part of Calabria on the mainland.  It's an imposing position for a town.  I can only imagine that it would have made for formidable defences back during more turbulent times.  Nothing would be able to approach in secret with the view stretching out unobstructed far off into the distance.

From the top of the town, you could walk down to the beach, get a car, or take the far more scenic option of the cable car. The lines for the cable car were long, but the trips up and down did give some incredible views.  Each trip was quite short, but it gave a great perspective of the region far off into the distance.

Once we reached the bottom, we found ourselves a nice beach club and settled for the day.  The beach itself was pebbly.  The water was clear.  The mood lively and happy.  Off to the side was the famous island itself.

The beach arched around to the island from two sides.  Both the beaches forming a point towards the island.  Depending on the tides, there would be a small bridge across to the island that was either entirely submerged or only slightly above the water.

There was a constant flow of people heading too and from the island.  There was something strangely unique about being able to walk across from the beach to this island.  It felt special.  Something different and beautiful.  I thought back to my travels when I was young with my family in Thailand and how we could walk from island to island across the sandbars.  This seemed like the smaller and more compact Mediterranean version of that experience.

On the island itself were the remains of an old villa.  It had been maintained to a degree, with some small art displays inside, and only a hint of the grandeur that must have once come with living in such a place.  Looking out the windows, you could look out across the sea and back towards the main beaches and the long coastline.  It didn't feel entirely real.  It was almost as though this was part of an elaborate movie set for a glamourous movie about a gilded life in the Mediterranean.

We floated up and down between Taormina and the coastline over the next few days.

Every moment spent on the beach was a joyous time of relaxation and comfort.  The sound of the waves, the warmth of the air and the back and forth into the water was a lovely rhythm that I knew wouldn't last forever.  I wanted to embrace and remember it for as long as I could.

On our last day, we went to a different beach to the side of Isola Bella.  It was equally beautiful, though a bit calmer without the big crowds seeking out the perfect picture of Isola Bella in the background.  The hotel had arranged with the beach club for a car to pick us up, but it seemed to get lost on the way to us.  When we finally arrived, the very apologetic beach club took us straight to the front seats and gave us complimentary granitas as an extra apology.  It was a nice gesture and I was more than happy to accept. 

There wasn't much reason to be unhappy or annoyed.  A slight delay here and there is fine.  When you're in a place with such beauty and calm happiness, I thought it was best to be more relaxed in all my responses. 
 

Taormina

Taormina has always been a famous tourist destination, seemingly more so now that it is one of the locations of the show White Lotus.  However, it still doesn't have the same name recognition as Positano or Cinque Terre.  Yet even without this recognition, it is a resort town that seems to be the premier destination in Sicily and it holds a beloved reputation with Italians.  Whenever we were asked about where we were going in Sicily, the answer of Taormina seemed to illicit dreamy eyes and responses of longing for this seemingly magical place.  It was a good sign for what were to experience.

We had arrived late in the afternoon.  In the heat of the day, we had gone straight to the hotel pool to cool off and to relax.  It was a beautiful location to lounge and to cool off.  There were families and couples all enjoying the pool, perched at the top of the cliff overlooking the coastline.  Children laughed and jumped around the pool, whilst the couples lay on the sunbeds next to one another sleeping and tanning.  We found our own sunbeds and I dragged an umbrella over us to provide us with some respite from the blazing sun.  Veronica fell asleep as I jumped into the pool and waded up and down.  It was a big pool, but it wasn't really for swimming.  It was more to splash about and to cool off.  I waded up and down the length of the pool, my eyes constantly turning back towards the lovely view of the rising hills above.  

As the sun set, we went back to our room and changed for the evening.  We were refreshed and relaxed and wanted to see the town itself.  The hotel was the on edge of the town.  Walking out of the front door of the hotel, we couldn't see Mt Etna clearly anymore.  We walked around and into the town.  Taormina is a long town.  It stretches along the hillside, with the main street through the town hugging along the length of the town.  The side streets up and down are usually stairs leading down or up towards the smaller parallel streets that also run across the length of the town. 

In the middle of it all was a large open space, the Piazza Aprile IX.  The square was surrounded on three sides by churches and shops, but on the other side it opened up out towards the ocean.  Perched on the side of the hill, the view was entirely unobstructed and even in the early evening you could see how into the distance.  It wasn't the largest square I had been too, but it felt very grand and opulent.  The checked tiles on the floor seemed to give the feeling that the whole square was a ballroom rather than just an open space outside. 

For the next few days, we enjoyed the good life in Taormina.  We wandered and explored the lovely town.  WE walked in and out of the small shops.  We had coffees and cakes, lounged in restaurants and relaxed.  The town wasn't an enormous sprawling place, but there were lots of small lanes and streets to be explored and enjoyed.   Around each corner, there were new places to be discovered, and of course the constant views that opened up towards the ocean and Mt Etna.

For a place completed inundated with tourists, many of whom would day trip in from the region or the much larger city of Catania, we found we were able to easily find places of quiet and calm.  Of the main street that crossed the entire town, there were secluded spots where we were able to enjoy a meal or to simply sit and look out at the scenery.

The shops we entered all felt distinctly "Sicilian", though not in a very traditional way.  There were the tourist knickknacks available everywhere, with the presence of the strange and at times intimidating "Moors Heads" being ubiquitous.  It was all a bit Sicilian Disneyland at times, but it was something to accept rather than fight.  At the very least, it all added to the mood and atmosphere of the place.

Part of enjoying this town was of course sampling as many foods as possible.  I wasn't sure if what we were eating was truly Sicilian or not.  It all seemed a bit too perfect and well put together.  There was definitely the taste of the region in everything we tried which was something to be appreciated.  There were some more avant garde dishes we tried.  Italy seems to have a deep reverence to its past and traditions, so all of these dishes seemed to be twists or adaptations of local classics.

As much as I enjoyed these more unique creations, we were ultimately drawn back to the tradition of Italy.  Maybe there was something to be said about keeping a closer adherence to the past in Italy?  We ate the traditional cakes, ate the red prawns and tried the granita.

All of it was amazing.  I'm sure there was an element of the location adding to the enjoyment, but the quality of the produce used in everything was apparent in everything.  

As with many of the other places we have had the good fortune of visiting, it seemed that the evenings were the best time.  There was still an incredible liveliness and energy in the place, but the slight decrease in numbers and the heat made the whole place more welcoming and friendly.

The mood of every street seemed to be buoyant, as travelers and locals alike gathered in the restaurants and cafes.  We continued our walking up and down, stopping in and out of the stores.  Eating the gelato.  Trying the granita.  Having a drink.  Browsing the shops.  Over and over again, without any feeling of repetition or boredom.   It was a lovely and idyllic time were were having.

Approaching Mt Etna

The time spent at the beach in Cefalu was great.  After being confronted by Palermo, it had been a lovely respite and chance to calm down.  We were now well and truly into the second half of our trip which would be focused more on a slow relaxation.  I hired a driver to take us to our next location on the East coast of the island.  Had we had a bit more time, I think I would have liked to have hired a car myself and driven around the island, but given we weren't going to be moving too much and we wouldn't be finishing at the same spot, it seemed to make more sense to only get the car when it was needed.

The drive took us through the middle of the island.  The journey seemed to take less than two hours, and in that time I saw the landscape change dramatically.  It was an interesting journey that took us from the dry and at times almost desolate parts of the Northern part of the island, through the centre and towards more lush and fertile areas towards the East.  At the start, I couldn't help but think of back home in Australia.  There was a harshness to the landscape and a colour palette that seemed ripped from a pastoral image in country NSW.  This was an island with an incredible history as well.  For such a short journey by car, it seemed to belie the struggles and pains of those who had come and fought through these lands in the past.  Recently, this was of course the first location of the Allied reinvasion of Europe during World War II, as Patton and Montgomery both raced up through the island.  Going back far more years, this was the location of the failed Athenian Sicilian Expedition.  One of the turning points in history as the finest of Athens died or were sold into slavery after they unsuccessfully tried to take the island.  The suffering of those men would have been immense as they struggled through the valleys and the gaps between the imposing hills and mountains.  Yet now, we were able to glide effortlessly from one side to the other in a morning.

Since the drive wasn't too long, I thought it made sense for us to use the opportunity to visit a winery on the slopes of Mt Etna.  Our driver had helped us to arrange a scenic spot for both lunch and a tasting.  We reached the city of Catania and looped past on our way up to Mt Etna.  The road started the very slow climb up, and we could soon see the various vineyards that sat on the slopes.  The car entered into a region that seemed to be almost exclusively vineyards and wineries.  The car turned down a small road and led us to the vineyard.  Through the old stone walls, we walked through into a beautiful open area shaded by trees and overlooking the rows of vines.

It was a breathtakingly beautiful scene.  I struggled to think of the right word to describe it all.  Pastoral?  Bucolic?  Neither of those terms seemed to fit.  It was a scene of refined elegance.  It was a highly curated natural beauty, but it was lovely.  Walking into the breezy open area, I felt this sense of relaxation and calm.  We were led to our table underneath the shade.  We were being served a tasting menu paired with wines grown in the vineyards we were sitting opposite.  As the food came, we sat deeper into our chairs.  It was simple food that was cooked delicately with produce from the area.  Eggs, dairy and seafood, all served of course with various pasta dishes.  With each dish, a wine was paired.  For all our happiness with our situation, we looked at one another a bit with each wine.  There was no other way of describing them, except as not good!  I thought I would give them some time to breath a bit more before making my final judgment.  It didn't work, more time seemed to make the wines worse.  There was a sour sharpness to them.  It had been something we had noticed since arriving in Sicily, and I would be educated more later by sommelier and wine merchant friends that the myth of the great Sicilian wines was limited to the truly exceptional wineries.  For all others, it was apparently best to stay away. 

It was all fine though and it was nothing to be complained about.  Just another interesting quirk and experience of travel.  We both sat comfortably and satisfied with where we were.  The sun was up, and we could feel the warmth in the air, along with the cool wind that blew across.  Looking out from our table, there were the usual couples like ourselves, but also some large families who seemed to making their grand tour of Italy together.  Maybe it was a return to an ancestral home, an attempt to connect with the past?

Well fed and full of wine, we found the driver and got back in the car.  The final drive to the hotel was short but scenic.  We were winding along small streets and seemingly innumerous small towns that surrounded the slopes of Mt Etna.  Our driver lived in the area and explained the lifestyle of the area to us, the family life and the lovely benefit of having access to such fertile soils for their personal gardens.  The road became steeper and we began to climb.  Not too far away, we could see small towns that dotted the tops of the hills and high points.  One of these was our next stop, Taormina. 

We arrived in front of the grand old hotel.  We checked in quickly, and I immediately took Veronica with me down through the hotel garden to the pool with the spectacular view.  Perched out at the very end of a cliff, it had a commanding view that looked out towards the ocean.  I jumped straight into the water, wading up and down gazing back and forth towards both the sea and the mountain.  This would be a good place to spend the next few days.