“...an island far away to the west and south. It is not down on any map; true places never are.”
Herman Melville, Moby Dick
I was halfway to Fiji when I realised I had no idea where I was going. After an eight-hour layover at Hong Kong’s Lantau Island airport, the check-in counter for Air Pacific finally opened, and I learned that another eleven-hour flight lay ahead. A flight to the east and south, actually— to a point just north of the Tropic of Capricorn and pretty much right on top of the International Date Line. Except that it’s an imaginary line, so Fiji sits, officially at least, to the west of it.