1999-2004: The South Pacific 

Mar 19, 2000 - Vuda Marina, Fiji

Dear Big John:

Hey, daily journal entries ain't so easy. Especially now that I am on what is locally known as "Fiji Time". On the other hand, life has been remarkably unexciting of late, with little to report but some rainy weather, swimming with the kids, cleaning the boat, and lots of reading. Reading - thank god for books. bet I've read a book a day this past month, with no discrimination whatsoever. Currently I am devouring a Patrick O'Brian sea adventure (better than the Homblower books by far), and a book called "Guns, Germs, and Steel" that tries to explain why some societies advanced further than others I am also reading aloud a chapter of the Narnia series each evening — not as good as the Oz books of my youth, but reading aloud with a little warm body on each side of you has its moments.

Len writes that a work of art was donated to Stanford in your honor. It's by the sculptor who did that big Friar pointing across highway 280, right? I heard he was having some trouble finding a home for his latest work... Seriously, I need details, because all I got from Len was a sentence or two followed by lots of "Got You Lasts". When will he learn to grow up? Besides, I got him last so thoroughly with my last several emails, you'd think he'd throw in the towel by now.

Our itinerary for July is shaping up nicely. Roughly it is as follows:

     July 15   Arrive L.A. International; drive to San Diego

     July 15-20 Nicki and Lee

     July 21   Drive to Sue's beach house

     July 22-24 Sue's beach house with Iry and Marcia

     July 25   Get to the Bay Area

     July 26-28 family, dentists, doctors, friends

     July 29   Drive with Len or Erik to Gold Lake

     July 29-Aug 5 Gold Lake

     Aug 6     Back to Bay Area

     Aug 7-10   more family, dentists, doctors, friends

     Aug 11     Fly to Nadi

As you can see, we have two shots at seeing you guys. Get ready to party.  Dana and Rachael have been cleaning Dana's cabin all day, and just announced that they are "almost done". I will soon head down for inspection. What I hope to find is three piles: "dirty", "clean", and "throw/give away" We shall see.

No word from Caren, but, then, I suspect the opportunities for sending email from Buddhist temples in northern Thailand are probably limited. I am so glad she was able to make this trip happen.

Tonight is "half-priced roast beef night" at the First Landing restaurant next door. Hey, don't knock it, it's how we measure the passage of time here at the marina.

Mike returns either tomorrow or the day after tomorrow (you never know which day things happen when you live near the International Date Line). We'll probably try to get out to the islands again, and hopefully get Rachael her Scuba certification, before Caren returns. The hurricane season is officially over in just a few weeks. Hurrah!

Love,

Sam

Mar 25, 2000 - Musket Cove, Fiji

Dear Big John:

Mike returned from Scotland, all pasty-faced and bushed from the 23 hour flight and twelve hour time difference -- it took him several days to get back into Fiji mode. My, was he glad to be back, and were the kids excited. They set up a treasure hunt for him, with each message leading to the next, and the final prize a couple of chocolate bars.

Most of the major boat projects are completed: Henry the woodworker has installed new grills for the air conditioning ducts, new shutters for the main cabin hatches, and new wooden borders for the main cabin portholes; Dana has a bookcase; and the salon's wooden ceiling beams have been painted and reinstalled. The sailmaker, behind schedule as usual, has measured and made his first fitting for a skirt to fit the boltrope holder around the hard dodger -- he promises to have it for final fitting upon our return to Vuda Marina on April 2. This skirt will keep the sun and the rain from coming into the cockpit, plus two side skirts will enable us to keep the salon's side hatches and the aft cabins' hatches open during rain. In tropical weather such as we have been experiencing, every open hatch is another chance to bring a breeze into Rhapsodie (for "breeze" read "comfort"). I do not remember ever in my life spending such an extended length of time in such hot weather as I have these past four summer months in Fiji. Caren and the kids haven't seemed to mind it much, but I just don't tolerate the heat as well as they do. Memories of my Peace Corps days in Malaysia and travels in northern India come back, but I still say Fiji heat has set a new high.

Your wonderful email describing the events of March 5 actually brought tears to my eyes. You are such a wonderful man, so loved and respected by so many people, with so many accomplishments, and so modest. I am full of admiration and love for you. You deserve all the honors that are getting heaped upon you these days; I am just sorry not be there with you. Incidentally, I assume you know what a Sieve of Eratosthenes is? Yes, of course you know. Just checking. While we are on the subject of mathematics, I read that a publishing house has offered a million dollars for a solution to the Goldbach Conjecture within two years. I assume you know what the Goldbach Conjecture is? Yes, of course you know. Just checking.

I received an email from Caren a few days ago. She is in a Buddhist temple in northern Thailand, somewhere near Chiang Mai (my favorite Thai town), and under the wing of the temple's Abbot, who has set up an intensive ten day meditation program specially for her — quite an honor, apparently. She sounded full of enthusiasm. We've tried to phone each other several times over the past few days, with no success.

We sailed out of Vuda Marina yesterday afternoon to Musket Cove, a lovely bay just a few hours from Viti Levu, next to the island of Malololailai. Mike brought us word on his return that the PADI organization (which has a sort of world monopoly on certification of scuba divers) has just lowered its age limit for "junior open water certification" from 12 to 10 years. So, with hat in hand, we went ashore to the local dive shop and presented Rachael to its instructor. He has a policy of not instructing anyone below the age of13, but Rachael won him over, and begins her course today. If she succeeds, she will be one of the youngest scuba divers ever certified. She is full of enthusiasm, and has even foregone the afternoon snorkeling session to remain onboard Rhapsodie and study the PADI manual. Go girl.

Oops, it is 2:00 PM, time for said snorkeling session. Gotta go.

Back from the snorkel session. Rachael stayed on board with Mike and studied her PADI manual, while Dana, Rob Moyle, and I swam off of Sunflower reef. (We had met Rob in Pago Pago, and reconnected with him here in Fiji. He is sailing solo aboard Carmelite, running out of money, just waiting for the hurricane season to end before he returns to his home state of Hawaii to make some money so that he may continue his sailing life.)

Sunflower reef, about two miles out and around the southern corner of Musket Cove, turned out to be one of the prettiest reefs we have encountered. It was low tide, the reef only a few feet below the surface, and hence a bit dangerous to swim over; the edge of the reef, however, where we spent most of our time, dropped off to about twenty feet, and was just packed with corals of all colors, fields of white anemones with clown fish hiding amongst their tentacles, and clouds of fish. We were accompanied the entire time by a school of zebra fish (obviously looking for a handout). Dana spotted a scorpion fish (beautiful with its filmy, floaty ribbons of red and white, but, of course, deadly) and found an almost-new face mask; Rob found a ray that Dana chased for a while, and yours truly shot a roll of film with my recently acquired used Nikonos II underwater camera. Trumpet fish, tangs, squirrel fish, butterfly fish, lettuce corals, sea plumes, staghorn corals... Tomorrow we will return with the snuba gear, which will permit us to remain at 20 feet and more comfortably watch the wonders before us.

As I type this journal entry Mike is clearing the through hull for the refrigeration unit, Dana is drawing geometrical designs, and Rachael is taking her first PADI test. We are moored off the resort at Musket Cove, amongst about a half dozen other yachts. After Rachael completes her test, we will take the dinghy to shore, use the swimming pool, eat at the restaurant, and watch the evening's film. Mike has been invited by Rob and some other cruising friends to play a friendly game of poker, which will be his first. The sky is puffy with cumulus clouds, their are rain squalls onthe horizon, and occasional rumbles of thunder. The temperature at 5:00 PM is 89 degrees, which feels quite cool. 

Love to you,

Sam

Mar 28, 2000 - Musket Cove, Fiji

Dear Big John:

Just said good-bye to Rachael and Mike as they dinghied in for the third dayof Rachael's Snuba course. She is doing very well on her written work, with only one area that needs review: the dive table computations, which help you figure out how long you may go down, and to what level, on each succeeding dive in a day. The bad news is that on her first open water dive, yesterday afternoon, she was unable to descend more than a few feet because of painful sinuses. She will probably have to delay her dives for a day or two until her sinuses clear up. Poor girl -- she was so excited, and ended up havingto sit alone in the dive boat while the other divers went below. She will try again this afternoon. Good luck, Rachael.

I spent all yesterday alone with Dana on Rhapsodie, home schooling and then banana bread baking. Yesterday was a Good School Day with Dana, and he breezed through math, history, geography, spelling, grammar, composition,  typing lesson (he reached a new high of 22 wpm, 89% accuracy), you name it.  When he wants to, the guy is amazing.

Since Caren has been gone, Dana and Rachael have been sleeping in my cabin, one on each side. Dana is a cuddler, Rachael much less so, but it is one of the best parts of my life, to be next to these two cute warm little bodies night after night.

I too the evening off and signed up for a night dive, only the second in my life: spooky, but fun. Saw my first shark at night, a small white-tip, which cruised right under me, looked around, then cruised away, apparently bored by us divers. We saw four (I) moray eels, one bigger than Dana, and a large crab that was carrying around a piece of bright red seaweed as camouflage (thus making the crab instantly visible from even a great distance). Not as colorful as daylight diving, even with our flashlights, but very peaceful and with the flashlight beams probing the darkness, occasionally brightening a surprised fish, punctuated with little moments of excitement. You never know what is around the next corner, so you tend to be a lot more aware at night. Definitely an interesting way to pass the time.

Friends in the Bay Area keep telling us that the housing market has gone through the roof (ha ha), and that we should stay away more often, as our net worth increases with each month in the South Pacific, Hmm, maybe that means we can raise the rent next year?

Steven Spielberg is due in town soon, presumably to continue filming Castaway, with Tom Hanks, on an island just north of us. Did I tell you that we berthed next to Geraldo Rivera in December? Just to remind you that you are not the only one hobnobbing with famous people. Caren liked him, and especially his wife, who reminded Caren of Bette Mdler. We later learnethat he threatened to sail to the Lau Islands in east and south Fiji without prior permission from the government (which took us two months to get), getting everybody mad at him, which I am sure is just what he wanted.  Unfortunately, it has resulted in the bar being raised for all future Lau Island visitors: there is now a $250 fee (it used to be free), and some clown is trying to add a $500 fee every time you drop your anchor, and $1000 every time you go ashore. This is so patently ridiculous we are going to ignore the fees, cross our fingers, and try not to get thrown out of the country. If you have anything you want delivered to us, Laura Macmillan, Rachael's  school buddy, is flying to meet us in Fiji on April 12, and she has plenty of  room in her baggage for stuff. Her parents are John and Marilyn, they live on 435 Cervantes Road, Portola Valley, and their phone number is 851-2575. 

So how are we holding up under this cruising lifestyle? Pretty well, but it  ain't easy. I think the kids are best off. They complain of having no friends and of "nothing to do", but they have each other, and they have Mike, and they have their parents, and, all told, their life is a lot better than they make it out to be. Both Caren and I have had much more difficulty adjusting to the change. Caren has been hit the hardest. For some reason, the change in lifestyle has brought up lots of stuff that she has managed to keep under wraps all her life -- including problems with her parents dating back to her childhood, and of course the years before and during their messy  divorce (sound familiar?) Luckily, she has the time and the will to faced these problems, and is going at them with a vengeance. She has been away from the boat now -- first New Zealand, now Thailand - for over a month, and we all miss her, but I believe she's doing exactly what she should be doing, and I can't wait to see her and learn of her experiences when she returns in a week or so. As for me, many's the night I have wakened at 3 AM and stared at the ceiling of my cabin, wondering what in the world I am doing way over here in Fiji. Each time I get an email from home with news of family, work, Silicon Valley, whatever, I get a nasty feeling inside that I am a useless, lazy, good-for-nothing guy who has abdicated his responsibilities. One half of me argues that all this quality time with my family, with local folks, and with other yachties in remote parts of the world is how life should be lived, the other half says "Wake up, go home, and get a job. You're wasting your time over here." Not a fun dilemma to deal with at 3:00 AM. One problem I face that virtually no other yachtie faces is that I am not in total love with yachting. Other yachties can happily spend all afternoon either fixing their boats, or talking about boats, or (even!) sailing them; I look upon boats as a means to get around the world with a family that permits one to visit places that are otherwise unvisitable, and to be relatively comfortable and safe in so doing_ But goodness me, boats sure are a lot of trouble!  They sit in salt water all day, steadily corroding and wearing down.

Apr 17, 2000 - Kadavu Island, Fiji

Dear Big John, Big Len, and Big Bruce:

Sigh. Keeping up a journal is a lot harder than I thought. I just checked my last entry, and it was written more than two weeks ago...

Len and Bruce: I have been trying to keep a journal going for a short while;  this is a sample entry (a bit longer than usual) -- do you want to be on its mailing list? If not, just respond with an email with the words "I HAVE BEEN GOTTEN LAST BY BIG SAM' as the Subject.

John, Happy Anniversary! April 1, no less! I am ashamed to admit that I did not know the date. 47 years? That's a very respectable number. Parallel universes be damned, I like to think of these years as representing the best of all possible outcomes.

Thanks for the Japan info. We will be in the Lao Islands the entire time you are in Japan, and always reachable via email. Will you have access to email while in Japan? That would be the preferred (read: only) way of communicating with us while you are in that most mysterious of countries.

But to more important topics, to wit: Rachael, I am proud to announce, is a fully certified PAD! open water scuba diver, one of the youngest in the world. She passed her written tests without a hitch, and her open water dives, needless to say, were pieces of cake. She is an underwater natural. I dove beside her during her last two qualification dives, and had the privilege of witnessing her experience her first underwater thrills (rays, moray eels, clown fish, nudibranches). We just need to teach her not to try to touch everything she sees, and she'll be as solid and safe a scuba diver as she is a swimmer.

Once she was certified, we returned to Vuda Marina for yet more work on the boat. In particular, we had hoped to have the generator overhauled; unfortunately, we had forgotten to order the most important parts required for a generator overhaul, to wit, the rings (duh). The overhaul will just have to wait. Instead, we cleaned the boat from bow to stern, the sailmaker created a very useful sun and rain shade for the cockpit, and Rachael's cabin's air conditioner got yet one more overhaul (unfortunately, as I write these words, it has once more gone on the blink).

Laura Macmillan, one of Rachael's best friends, arrived three days ago, and, fully provisioned, we set sail for Kadavu, Fiji's fourth largest island, just south of Viti Levu. The passage was quite rough, with the wind on our nose the entire time -- the kids slept through it all, but I bailed my way through my 2 AM to 6 AM watch. Really, sailing is sometimes a most uncomfortable way to pass the time. Fortunately, we guessed right on our destination: a bay sheltered by a reef and a little island, just offshore from the lovely village of Nabukelevuira, on the western end of Kadavu. Rarely visited, pristine, authentic, this has to be the finest anchorage of our stay in Fiji to date. The water is so clear we can easily see our anchor in 60 feet of water, and the coral reef adjacent to us is just loaded with goodies. The village is large and wealthy, thanks to its production of kava, the plantwhich, when processed, produce the national drink of Fiji. Kadavu's kava is reputedly the best in Fiji, and Nabukelevuira's the best in Kadavu.

As is customary, immediately upon anchoring I went ashore with a half kilo of kava as a sevusevu (gift) to present to the village chief, and to request permission to anchor off of his village. He heard me out, accepted my sevusevu, and we've been here ever since. I spent the first day getting to know some of the locals, which is really not very difficult: just walk past a bure, and you practically get pulled in for a visit. This island gets very few visitors, so our arrival was kind of a big deal. By the end of the afternoon I had arranged for the kids to visit the local school, for myself to visit the Torana ni Koro's (mayor's) kava plantation, and for an invitation to the church fundraiser the next evening. Not to mention a night dive of spear fishing with flashlights. Busy, busy.

The school visit was a big success (although the kids tend to downplay such cultural interactions): we visited the oldest kids (12-15 years) and the youngest kids (5-6), talked about the United States and our trip to Fiji, and took some pictures with my digital camera. Rachael, Dana and Laura handed out candy, and the kids sang us some songs. But the biggest cultural doo-dah was the church fundraiser. It was held in a large bure reserved for village meetings, with no furniture, only woven mats, and attended only by the men of the village. I brought another kava sevusevu and dressed conservatively in sulu (sarong) and white shirt, and was formally welcomed and invited to sit next to the Torana ni Koro. Then the kava drinking began.

Kava (yanggona in Fijian) is a tranquilizing, nonalcoholic drink that numbs the tongue and lips, and comes from the waka (dried root) of a relative of the pepper plant. It's ceremonial preparation is central to the formal life of Fijians, Tongans, Samoans, and Vanuatans. The waka is pounded into a powder, mixed with water, strained through vau (hibiscus) fibers, and thenthe mata ni vanua (master of ceremonies) displays the strength of the kava by pouring out a cupful into the tanoa (wooden bowl). If the mata ni vanua considers the mix too strong, he calls for wai (water), then says "lose" ("mix"), and the mixer proceeds. When it appears right the mata ni vanua says "lomba" ("squeeze"). The mixer squeezes the remaining juice out of the pulp, puts it aside, and announces "Sa lose oti saka na yanggona, vaka turanga" ('The kava is ready, my chief'). He runs both hands around the rim of the tanoa and claps three times.

The mata ni vanua then says "talo" ("serve"). The cupbearer squats in front of the tanoa with a mbilo (half coconut shell), which the mixer fills. The cupbearer then presents the first cup to the guest of honor (me), who claps once and drains it, and then claps three times. The second cup goes to the guests' mata ni vanua, who claps once and drinks. The man sitting next to the mixer says "aa", and everyone answers "matha" ("empty"). This continues until everyone has had a cupful, when, surprise, another round begins. We started at around 5:30 in the afternoon, and I called it quits around 10 that evening — and I was one of the first to leave. And by the time I had left, the men had given somewhere around $4,500 to the church. This is one rich little village.

I have had kava many times before in Fiji - it is pretty much required when you visit a new village -- but I had never before tried to keep up with the locals for so long. Frankly, I don't know how they do it. When I left, I had drunk about 30 cupfuls of kava — the quantity of liquid alone was enough to send me to the bushes about a half dozen times. Its effect on me that evening was to slowly slow me down, until my speech and movements all seemed at about 1/2 normal speed. My lips and tongue were numb and tingly. And I felt kind of goofily happy just sitting there with all these nice men, understanding little, saying less, just watching the bowls get passed. Clearly it serves the purpose of making everybody feel good about life and each other, but it also takes its toll: I slept the next day until noon. Iwas invited back to continue drinking the next evening (for they drink kava every evening in these villages, fund raiser or no), but I politely declined.

We spent another day in Nabukelevuira, hanging out, passing out copies of the digital photos I had taken earlier (a big hit), playing rugby and volleyball on the school grounds, and trying my luck again at spearfishing, this time with one of the chiefs sons. His name was Sam, and he was simply amazing in the water. He wanted to try out our spear gun, so he jumped into the water with it, immediately swam to the bottom - 70 feet -- and returned about 1 1/2 minutes later with a fish on the spear. The deepest I have ever free dived is probably about 60 feet, and then only to immediately turn around and head up again. I tried following him around that afternoon, but the depths he was comfortable at kept hurting the air spaces in my fillings, so I spent most of the time near the surface, just marveling at his skill.

That day (Saturday) the wind turned to the West, blowing straight into our anchorage, and by early evening the boat was getting bounced around quite a bit by the big wind-induced fetch. At midnight Mike and I were awakened by a big bang, and discovered our anchor bridle had snapped. We immediately turned the engines on, and while I kept the boat from pulling on the anchor chain, Mike fastened a second bridle. At 4 AM another bang announced that our second anchor bridle had snapped, this time from chafing. The wind was up more, the fetch even worse, and we realized we had better get out and find a more sheltered anchorage. When we tried to raise the anchor, however, we discovered it was jammed into a coral head, and, at seventy feet below us, there was no way to free it. So we fastened a buoy with a line to the anchor chain as a marker, and let the chain loose, leaving our anchor to be retrieved another day.

Just as we were leaving, our radar suddenly stopped working — the first time it had ever failed us. It was dark, windy, rainy, with rough seas, and we were surrounded by reefs. Luckily our GPS was functioning, and it had a trace of our path into the bay still on its display. So we followed our path out, and with flashes of lightning to help us, we rounded the southwestern end of Kadavu and proceeded east along the South coast for a few hours. By 7 AM it was light enough to see, we had located a likely bay more protected from the wind, and we were able to bring Rhapsodie to a safe arrival in Yauravu Bay, near the village of Naisuluga. The kids, of course, slept through the entire episode. The whole incident reminds me of a definition of sailing I heard some time ago: "Sailing consists of days and days of utter boredom followed by moments of utter terror."

We spent Sunday resting up, and celebrated our safe arrival by watching Amadeus on Rhapsodie's VCR. Late in the afternoon a boatload of villagers dropped by to see who we were. They were all young men, charming, handsome, polite, funny, and delighted to have something as exotic as Rhapsodie to visit. We promised to drop by for sevusevu the next day. After they left, Mike cooked up the rest of the fish we had caught at Cape Washington, we played a vicious game of ghost during its consumption, and crashed about ten at night, an hour past the children's bedtime.

It is now Monday morning, the bay is calm, the wind is down, there is blue sky amidst the scattered clouds. If the good weather holds, we will probably return to pick up the anchor this afternoon.

By the way, Laura delivered two books to us, presumably from you, that I have just loved: 'The New New Thing", by Mchael Lewis, a poorly written but fascinating account of one of Silicon Valley's most amazing entrepreneurs, and Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf, which is absolutely wonderful (I am reading it out loud to myself). Thank you so much for both. Reading is a major activity aboard Rhapsodie, and new books as good as these are always welcome.

Enough, enough, time to go

Love to all,

  Sam

  Yacht Rhapsodie 

  Yauravu Bay, 

  Kadavu Island, 

  Fiji

May 8, 2000 

Dear Pancho:

A Happy Birthday to you! We have to look after one another on these special occasions. I just returned from a one month trip to Thailand. It was a short notice opportunity...after spending time in New Zealand doing some physical  therapy for my back my meditation teacher offered me to come along on a Temple tour of Thailand to learn more about Buddhism. I spent time in Cheng Rai (forgive spelling from here on..) Ta Thon where I stayed at the Temple there, into Burma through Mesai, and the most time in Nan province. I went to a small town on the Laos border, Huy Kong, for Songkron, and also did a trek in the new National Park on the Laos border called Doi Puka. That was the highlight. I was the only trekker (with a guide who spoke English and hill tribe dialects), and definitely the only farang wherever I went. I attended a hill tribe "spirit" festival in the middle of the forest where hill tribes from all over gather primarily to slaughter a buffalo. The festival is held every 7 years and attracted a couple hundred exotic hill tribe people.

My meditation teacher turned out to be difficult to travel with (easily distracted by sweet young Thai things), but I learned about Buddhism as it's practiced in Thailand, the good and the bad. Finished the trip with a visit to my friend John in Bangkok. I miss the food, but otherwise it's good to be back with the family.

We're in Fiji for the next two months, then to the USA for a visit in July and return mid-August then off to Vanuatu, New Hebrides, and Australia for next season.

We have a favor to ask you. Do you have any contacts in the US embassy in Suva that would have high level contacts with the Fijian government? We are  caught in a third world problem where the laws have changed recently and our permission to visit the Lau group, a remote island group in Fiji, is in question (without paying crazy fees). We would like to clarify the situation with an official document before we take off next week so any contacts would be appreciated.  If you or Porn are headed to Thailand please pick me up a good cookbook (in English). Thanks.

Well, have a Happy Birthday.

Love and kisses 

Caren

May 10, 2000 - Vuda Marina, Fiji

Dear Big John:

Well, you are in for it now. I have gone and decided to begin a journal; toenter something into that journal every day; and to send said entries to Big John.

What does this all mean? Ah, good question. It could simply be the cumulative effect of the summer heat during the cyclone season here in western Fiji. But there's more to it than that. One of the unforeseen effects of selecting this cruising lifestyle is the incredible increase in writing that it spawns. Let me check ... according to Rhapsodie's log, we left San Francisco on May 25, 1999 (at 0500, just in case you thought you were dealing with lazy buggers); today, March 10, 2000, we are moored in Vuda Marina on the West coast of Viti Levu, Fiji's largest island. Within that period of about ten months, we have received and sent a total of over two thousand emails (I just counted): that's more than six a day! Next to the sails, the watermaker, the head, and the stove, it looks like the laptop computer is the busiest piece of equipment on board Rhapsodie.

So what sailing aboard Rhapsodie has done is force me to get back in front of a keyboard and write. Sounds nutsy from a guy who's every job for the past thirty years has put him in front of a keyboard, but that's comparing apples and oranges. For the first time in some thirty years, I am using a keyboard to write something other than code. Big Difference.

The other Big Difference is the Mini-M satellite phone we have on board Rhapsodie. It works everywhere, every time, and costs pennies per email. Plus, thanks to the email program I use, every letter I send out is automatically saved on the hard disk on my laptop, in chronological order, with subject titles intact. Sounds suspiciously like a journal to me...

You are free to disseminate whatever you like of my journal entries to anyone you care, but if I get too personal, I assume you will filter my remarks with your customary discretion -- another reason you are the recipient. But most of all. it's because I love you very much, and feel very close to you.

Okay, enough for entry one. Let's see how long this Journal commitment 

lasts...

Love

Sam