I got a postcard from Al & Natalie today. It seems they’re off on another epic vacation, this time a cruise around Australia and New Zealand. Among other exploits, they went ashore and had dinner one night at the Sydney Opera House.
Because they’re in Australia, they wrote the postcard upside down. That way, when the postcard arrived in North America, it would be right-side up and the recipient would have no difficulty reading it. Al & Natalie are very considerate about things like that.
It was a good plan, but they overlooked one small detail. By law (a holdover from their days as a British colony), all postcards in Australia, New Zealand, etc. come from the printer already upside down. The idea behind this is to better accommodate tourists from the Northern Hemisphere who might otherwise forget about “up” being a different direction than at home.
Naturally, the end result of these two good intentions is that when the postcard arrived, the photo was right-side up, but the note was upside down!