A cabin on the cruise ship. There will be T for Twin beds! We’ve been advised of our cabin number and the agent says we’ve been upgraded to a bigger cabin. Nice.

Three days to go. That’s a T word. Today I was at the shops thinking about a shopping list — Toilet paper; Tissues; Travel items i.e.Toiletries; check out a neat laptop, the T100; check prices on a neat camera, the Panasonic TZ60. An easy to remember list of Ts.

I got the first three items, but passed on the last two. The ASUS Transformer T100 is a very good idea – it’s a Windows laptop (Win8) with touch screen and full keyboard, but the 10″ screen detaches from the keyboard and acts as a tablet that I could take up on deck and use to read and write, using touch. At $499 with a full copy of Windows 8.1 installed, it’s well priced. T for Tempting. I’ve got the Samsung Galaxy tablet but the initial enthusiasm has worn off.There’s plenty I can do on a Windows laptop that the tablet can’t. Like video editing and making slide shows using Proshow producer.

Nothing like making a major decision on what to take so close to the trip.

The Panasonic TZ60 is a very slim all in one compact camera, usual specs, but with built-in GPS recording. That is, every shot has its GPS coordinates embedded for later use. But at $499 also, I don’t need it. No to that one.

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We’ve received an Emergency Notice from Princess Cruises. No-one who’s been to the west African Ebola states will be allowed to board, anywhere in the world. Fair enough.

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To the doctor again today to look at left leg. It’s not too bad, no skin breaks, but it looks bad and is very tender to touch in some places. Cellulitis. My skin is so thin that the interstitial fluid forces its way up to form lumps and can break through. The only answers are (i) massive doses of antiobotic, like up to 8 grams a day; (ii) pressure stocking or bandaging; and (iii) frequent massaging with Dermeze moisturising gel. That’s good stuff – messy, but it works. As a bonus, you get very soft hands.

My list of medications for the trip is long! I’ll be a walking pharmacy. I’ve realised that although I could stay on in Bali if I wanted to at the end, I will have run out of my meds. One in particular, Byetta injection. You can buy meds in Bali over the counter with no prescriptions but you can’t be sure they are genuine, and they cost about A$50 each.

I think I’m dreaming. I think I’ll be ready to head home after 5 weeks.

Crumbs, Air Asia offers a flight from Bali to Perth one way for $85. The catch is, it leaves DPS at 0630. The next flight at 1030 is $185. I’m a tightwad when it comes to flights and hotels, so I’ll consider the early flight. Hmmm.

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I’m working on the big computer again now. I found the problem with the hard drive — by bad luck, I chose a drive that was not formatted and the install disk didn’t recognise it. So then it was a new install of Win7, then install the backup software, then use that to recover the entire C: partition from my backup drive. All this took around two hours.

The result is that I’m back to the state it was in around ten days ago. I lost some things, but nothing I can’t recover. The lesson I’ve learnt is backup, backup, backup, every night! It can happen to you.