My friends have always held a position that they absolutely need to be continuously more than politely sincere with me. It is not very easy to keep both (the friends and their suchlike sincerity) for very long time (some sixty years now) but we have managed. You are burdened with this bit of crap because more than one of them told me that they would never accept to endure what I go through just to "fly to Australia". They told me they would million times better prefer to buy themselves a ticket than eat their nerves with the superiors and the family.
None of them ever flew further East than Mersin in Turkey although Ratko and Ketrin did embark the Trans-Siberian Express and clickety-clacked themselves to Japan along some most impressive landscape I was told about. But that was different. This, of course, may mean that most of the people around me do not think much of the East in principle and of Australia, in particular. (to continue)
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