Cue the Arcadia

(If anyone gets that reference in the title, I’ll give them a cookie.)

I’m planning a little vacation for November and December at the moment, but it may be foiled by a politician.

This one is gonna be cool, although it’s jam-packed with eight cities in only 23 days. I initially wanted to go home to Dallas just for Thanksgiving, my favourite holiday, but then I realised that it’s not much more expensive to do an around-the-world trip than it is for a return ticket to DFW from Sydney. And that’s what tax refunds are for, no?

So, I figured, what the hell. Let’s circumnavigate the globe, Magellan. Chase the sun. A weekend in Hawaii, five or six days in Texas with the family and some friends (maybe hop down to College Station for the t.u. game), a couple days in DC (hello, Quarry House!), London, five or six days in Paris (my favourite city), Budapest, Amsterdam, Hong Kong, back home.

I have it all planned out—well, the flights and days and such. As a capricious traveller, I don’t plan my holidays much more than that, other than knowing I want to take a photo of this or that, or I want to see this football team, or I should eat here one time. I just need to secure the days off.

However, because of my job, I have to schedule my holiday around the Australian federal election, which has yet to be called. This is a new phenomenon to me, an American who is used to election day always being on, well, Election Day—in the US, it’s always the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Not so in Australia’s Westminster system, where it’s between 33 and 58 days from when the Prime Minister calls it. Or, more accurately, when the Governor-General (the Queen’s representative on this here island) dissolves the Parliament on advice from the Prime Minister.

PM John Howard has yet to call the election.

So some jackass who I wouldn’t even vote for if I could vote in this country (not just because I would vote Labor, but also because I’d have to live in his or Kevin Rudd’s electorates to actually vote for one of them—again, this system is weird) might spoil my beautiful plans.

This betting nation allows gambling on elections, so here are the odds for potential election dates, from Sportingbet Australia:

October 27 – called September 23 – pays $2.75
November 3 – called September 30 – pays $7.50
November 10 – called October 7 – pays $4.50
November 17 – called October 14 – pays $5.00
November 24 – called October 21 – pays $6.50
December 1 – called October 28 – pays $7.00
December 8 – called November 4 – pays $9.00

Anything after Nov. 10 and I’m screwed. That means Howard needs to get off his ass by this Sunday.

Come on, John. Do it. Call the bloody thing and let me go eat turkey!