For those of you who know me best this will sound familiar, but for the rest, it will be exciting and exotic! Ok, too much hyperbole. See? You're already getting to know me better.
I was born on September 29th,1973 in the sleepy town of Southport. It is on the Gold Coast of Australia and is usually not noticed by tourists going to Surfer's Paradise,a town who's name advertises its interest to outsiders and locals alike. This was not where my mother grew up. She was used to the drier and more lonely landscape of the Outback (more about that later). Thankfully friends and better hospitals encouraged her to bring me into the world close to the sea. I'm a real water baby and I assume it has something to do with hearing the waves pounding the shore just a few blocks from the hospital.
Life was sweet in those early days. I can say this with confidence because I have absolutely no memory of it and thus will infer this from all the photos of me sleeping blissfully. Our stay was brief, as at the age of 6 months we moved to Samoa to be with my father. If Southport was a sleepy town, then Samoa was a sleepy country. The population
including my new self and mother then was about 149,000. Once again we were surrounded by blue waters and lapping waves. It was and is paradise. I think I am beginning to sense a theme in my early geography. My parents met in Hawaii at University. My father studied Soil Science and my mother Political Science but more importantly, that's where I was conceived. I used to ask my father (my mother never indulged my inquisitions) where exactly he thought I was conceived. He would always answer very definitively "Makachakalakka" a place that sounded like chopped Latvian to my tiny ears. I pictured a beautiful beach, very much like the one you see in the photo on the right which I took the last time I was in Samoa. When I asked if it was a lovely moonlit beach my father would laugh and say it was the dormitories of the UofH. I never stopped asking my father these same series of questions throughout my childhood and the result never altered. I guess the beach that was my ticket into the universe was in my heart.
I was born on September 29th,1973 in the sleepy town of Southport. It is on the Gold Coast of Australia and is usually not noticed by tourists going to Surfer's Paradise,a town who's name advertises its interest to outsiders and locals alike. This was not where my mother grew up. She was used to the drier and more lonely landscape of the Outback (more about that later). Thankfully friends and better hospitals encouraged her to bring me into the world close to the sea. I'm a real water baby and I assume it has something to do with hearing the waves pounding the shore just a few blocks from the hospital.
Life was sweet in those early days. I can say this with confidence because I have absolutely no memory of it and thus will infer this from all the photos of me sleeping blissfully. Our stay was brief, as at the age of 6 months we moved to Samoa to be with my father. If Southport was a sleepy town, then Samoa was a sleepy country. The population
including my new self and mother then was about 149,000. Once again we were surrounded by blue waters and lapping waves. It was and is paradise. I think I am beginning to sense a theme in my early geography. My parents met in Hawaii at University. My father studied Soil Science and my mother Political Science but more importantly, that's where I was conceived. I used to ask my father (my mother never indulged my inquisitions) where exactly he thought I was conceived. He would always answer very definitively "Makachakalakka" a place that sounded like chopped Latvian to my tiny ears. I pictured a beautiful beach, very much like the one you see in the photo on the right which I took the last time I was in Samoa. When I asked if it was a lovely moonlit beach my father would laugh and say it was the dormitories of the UofH. I never stopped asking my father these same series of questions throughout my childhood and the result never altered. I guess the beach that was my ticket into the universe was in my heart.
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