Something that - well, I won’t say that it “didn’t go well”, because the play is not complete - let’s just say that it’s an “interesting development” at this point.

Last year we went to the Loft preachers’ festival in Christchurch at Christmas. At that time we were four in our party: Myself, Param Satya, Prahlad, and Alison. There I said: “Next time we’ll bring six people with us.”

That’s the projection for 2005 / 2006. The projection for 2006 / 2007 is that the festival will be here in Australia. There’s a point where the scales tip and you do a festival here instead of sending so many people over to NZ.

Anyway, just before the weekend I got a quote for eight people (there are an additional three who are going for a total of 11 from Brisbane). It was $2700. I didn’t act on it because of the lead up to Janmastami and Srila Prabhupada’s appearance day. I didn’t have time to meet with the financial controllers in the mad rush to secure the house and prepare ourselves for the weekend.

Now that things have calmed down a bit I check the prices again, and they’ve gone up to $4200!!

I rang the airline company and they told me that the earlier price was a special sale price which has since ended. I checked the quote again, and it did indeed say “Sale price”.

Lesson: Strike while the iron is hot.