Today I popped down to Coles at Winmalee to do a shop before meeting Tom after school. This is something that I do regularly and, often as not, it passes without any event out of the ordinary.

But today was different, for as I navigated the crisps aisle, I ran into two people I haven't seen in almost 10 years. Mr and Mrs Onishi, who lived in a house in the street behind us in Sanda, and whose family had a very close connection with Yes English School, were trolleying up the same aisle, collecting souvenirs for their return to Japan. I think that I was well, astonished, but also terribly pleased to see them. We had a short conversation about the family - small talk really - for their English is rudimentary and my Japanese quite forgotten.

Members of the Onishi family, principally Setsuko and Makiko, but also Keiko, had studied with our English school for years. They were also friends and showed us many kindnesses during our time in Japan. So to run into the heads of this special household was an unalloyed joy.

Incidentally, I have it on good authority that the Earth is really the only place to be. I cite Dr Zachary Smith, he of the Lost in Space saga who found that there was simply no substitute for the original, and this, having reluctantly traveled to many dismal planets. In fact, Dr Smith was willing to do almost anything, commit any treachery, just to get back to the Earth. That was not to be. The good Doctor was far too avaricious to get the ride home. And he didn't much like aliens, to boot!

Eminent physicist Stephen Hawking warned recently that humanity needed to colonize other worlds in order to avoid the risk of being made extinct as a result of a catastrophe on Earth. It comes amidst much talk about manned missions to Mars; expeditions that plan to set up new settlements with a no return to the mother planet policy, permanent habitats.

I get the idea that humans are destined to explore and that the boundaries of the Earth have nearly been breached in all directions, save perhaps the ocean floors. By all means, let's explore because it is inspirational, collaborative and may, for a period at least, focus all people on a single project. I remember the excitement of being present in my Grade 5 classroom as Armstrong placed his foot on the lunar surface. I remember the following year, as Apollo 13 ran into trouble, mulling over all the engineering options with friends in the school quad. Imaginations ran amok about events at what seemed to us, an impossible distance.

But if we really want to avoid extinction on the planet we evolved on, why not start at home. You don't need to run away into the cosmos at huge expense and risk if you do the hard yards of eliminating nuclear weapons entirely here. Likewise, money will buy the technology to survey Near Earth Objects more closely, and to put platforms into space that can launch probes and weapons to divert pesky asteroids that might do us harm. Across the range of potential catastrophe's there are few that sheer determination and serious financial backing can't ameliorate to some extent. The odds will lengthen on our extinction.

By all means let's go to Mars. But let's not throw out the baby while we are doing it.

For a few months now I have been doing a short crossword each day. They are not long and not difficult though now and then, quite simple words fail to emerge from the vault of my mind. But yesterday I finished the last crossword and today I publish the final totals chart. Each little box with a star inside is an individual crossword. Quite a lot, if you count them all up!

Yesterday I took Tom and his friend Sean to Haymarket to play Laser Tag, though really I just wanted to get him out of the house and away from the dreaded screen. On the top floor of the shopping complex that hovers above Paddy's Markets there is a games arcade of sorts that accommodates the aforementioned laser game, but also boasts a dodgem cars rink and a great many video and mechanically-augmented games. The journey from Hazelbrook was long and the train was crowded with cheap ticket day-trippers, amongst whom I guess we should have counted ourselves.

At some point we strolled through Haymarket, for the boys wanted slushies, and on the way back down Dixon Street, which we would call the epicentre of Sydney's China Town, there was a hoola-hooping clown. I have often seen him there, elevated on a box, hips gyrating to Chinese electronic folk music. He is the kind of performer who would induce passing adults to describe a small but discernible semi-circular buffer zone, lest they be summoned by his fantastical self. Children have no such compunctions and so, of course, we found ourselves entering the world of the clown.

Turns out that this interesting man is an 84 year old Korean War veteran, whose central hoola-hooping purpose is religious. He was proselytizing for a Korean Church and he asked me to read a passage from a Good News Bible, which I was only too happy to do. And he insisted on taking this photo with Tom, bless him!

Last Tuesday I started a new volunteer job, teaching ESL at the Thai Welfare Association in Sydney. I have been becoming increasingly desperate to get out of the house and do something useful for a while now, for I find my other volunteer work not especially challenging.

Just being in the space with the freshly-arranged tables and expectant white board and students arriving was exciting enough for me, and would have been sufficient. But the lesson (only two students could attend) was a delight and I hope that I can continue with classes into the future.

Searching for and adapting resources for this level of student has also been surprisingly interesting - not a chore all! I have been amazed and gratified by the sheer volume of ESL-based worksheets of all stripes. Not all are up to scratch but the fact that other teachers have gone to the trouble to create and publish their work shows a generosity that I hope to repay in the near future.

Without labouring the point about things Trump (the point is definitely laboured -ed.) it occurred to me that Trump is less like a modern dictator, though he is undoubtedly demagogic, and somewhat more like a corrupt Pope.

Consider Rodrigo Borgia, who became Alexander V1 in 1492. An outsider (from Spain), he had a number of illegitimate children whom he later promoted shamelessly. His reign is associated with gross nepotism, deceit, immorality and quite possibly the assassination of rivals. Trump doesn't have the latitude in the modern era to emulate Alexander, but he has qualities and opportunities that might be Borgia-like. Trump is a kind of outsider himself and is fulsome in promoting his children and close associates; he will wield significant power over appointments and can veto any legislation that comes to him from the Congress.

A Borgia he may well be.

Though Trump has won the Electoral College handily, he did not win the popular vote. Clinton won a plurality of the vote with 47.7 to 47.3% at the most recent count, which amounts to about 400,000 voters in round terms. Before you shout we wuz robbed this situation has happened a number of time before in American history, most recently and notoriously, in 2000 with Bush/Gore. Below is a little graphic got up by The Guardian, demonstrating this very fact.

Let's consider the proposition that Trump is a performance artist. The past 18 months have been so outlandish, so genuinely befitting of the moniker surreal, that one is led to wonder whether the offensive, contradictory, racist and misogynistic personage put forward as a serious candidate is real at all. What if this Trump, or, this iteration of Trump at least, is a clever role-play by a man who has accurately read the electorate and gambled that such a characterization would maximize his chances of winning the White House? Or, if not the White House, then a new career in media or suchlike as a consolation prize? Is it that implausible?

There are already some indications that Trump may be backing away from some of the key policies on which he campaigned, this in spite of having a majority in the Republican Congress. If Trump is principally a performance then we cannot know how he will govern or what he will do, since all that preceded was essentially provisional, purely a means to an end.

The coming months will test this thesis, so please watch this space.

Jacob Weisberg. the host of the podcast Trumpcast, thought that his broadcast would would end with the US election this week. After dozens and dozens of programs analysing the odd and oftentimes outrageous candidacy of the man Trump, Mr Weisberg was clearly looking forward to a return to something more appetizing. Trump was to be cast out into the business world from which he had unreasonably emerged, a kind of return to the black lagoon.

Not so. The man-baby has won and the show goes on, one of the few sources of solace in this ghastly mess.

Just finished listening to the FiveThirtyEight day-after podcast with Nate and the team. As usual, and despite their obvious exhaustion, there was a balanced and erudite discussion of what just happened. Its seems that Trump tapped into a discontent, comprised of fear or anger, that many blue collar Americans felt about their plight in a global economy. Conversely, Clinton could not completely put together the same coalition of groups that propelled Obama to victory twice, though she came very close. There was only a one point difference in three critical states which, had the reverse been true, would have made her President and changed today's narrative.

Of course, it's much more complex than that. So now, the Republican Party controls the whole game in Washington. The party that spent years obstructing the governance of the country must now govern. Democracy is a strange thing, and a messy thing but in spite of results that we may or may not like, it's still the best thing going.

Oops! I didn't see that coming! On the other hand, I did have an uneasy feeling these past two weeks.

I'll dissect this all later.

You will know by now that I closely follow American politics at the national level. Today, after months of campaigning in the nastiest and perhaps most controversial election process in living memory, I am watching the results come in on TV. Clinton is favoured to win by most pundits though the ones I give most credence to are the guys at FiveThirtyEight.

More later on this exciting and perhaps seminal vote.

Tom went on his first-ever way from home school camp last week. Ann and I picked him up yesterday. Waiting in the bleaching late afternoon sun as the buses snaked into the school bus area, disgorging crowds of tired students and equally tired teachers, the homecoming threatened to become a melee over bags and space. In the restricted space betwixt school wall and bus, it was a very tight fit and a disorderly end to what must have been a highly organised week.

The Sport and Recreation Camp, Myuna Bay, gave the kids the chance to do all the outdoorsy thing that they often don't do these days - canoeing and sailing, rock climbing and obstacle coursing, bush-walking and setting campfires. There was archery but also all the cooking and cleaning-up chores, great good fun no doubt and instructive too. Below I post two initial photos of Tom at play with his friends, though he is but a small figure in the broader scheme of things.

heels quicken, high

coils of hattery totter-

all for a horse race