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Click on Watch on YouTube to watch the full-length movie Apologies for the Spanish subtitles; it's the only copy available on YouTube
No other novel in the canon of Hermann Hesse's fiction matches the immense appeal pf "Siddhartha". Inspired by Hesse's profound regard for Indian philosophy and written in prose of almost biblical simplicity, it chronicles the quest of the Brahmin Siddhartha for the conquest of suffering and fear.
His tortuous road leads him through the temptations of luxury and wealth, the delights of sensual love, and the sinister threat of death-dealing snakes, towards fulfilment of his destiny as a ferryman guided by the all-knowing voice of the running river ...
To read the book, click here; or listen to the audio book here.
It's low tide in the river, and I'm in need of some refreshments as well.
The trip from Cape York across to Thursday Island starts at 21:30
I was unwashed, unshaven, and unprepared when a strange man with a white beard came strolling down the driveway, taking photos as he went. We value our privacy and I was in no mood to tolerate anyone invading it. "You seem to be lost!" I challenged him. "Hello, Peter", he replied, "I'm Bill Crowle from Canberra".
That took me back, quite a few years back, to my time in Canberra when I was still operating Canberra Computer Accounting Systems and Bill's wife Mary had been the accountant with one of my clients. I have had good relations with all my clients, and enduring friendships with some of them, but somehow Bill and Mary had dropped off the radar.
Mary Crowle on the phone at Punsand Bay on Cape York. Was she calling Canberra Computer Accounting Systems for computer support?
I don't know what made Bill drop in on me after almost three decades. Perhaps it was because, as he told me, his wife Mary had died a few years ago, and he was trying to re-connect with some people from the past. I expressed my condolences and we exchanged pleasantries, even though I still felt uncomfortable in my unwashed and unshaven state.
He left shortly afterwards but left his email address for future contact. He also left links to some YouTube clips of trips he and Mary had taken after he'd retired in 2001. The one above was of their trip to Thursday Island where I had lived and worked in 1977, and it brought back many happy memories for me, although Bill's wonky camera work didn't help.
Thanks for letting me see this clip, Bill, but don't give up your day job!
This famous line from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's 1798 poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" pretty much sums up the Arabian Peninsula: while it is gifted with a fabulous hydrocarbon endowment worth trillions of dollars, it has almost no water and relies on nearly 450 desalination plants to stop everyone from going thirsty.
About 100 million people live in the countries belonging to the Gulf Cooperation Council – Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman – all now under Iranian attack. Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE are, for all practical purposes, completely dependent on the desalination plants, particularly for metropolises such as Dubai. Saudi Arabia, and especially its capital, Riyadh, also relies on them.
Take the Jubail desalination plant, located on the Persian Gulf coast of Saudi Arabia. It supplies Riyadh, via a roughly 500-kilometre-long pipeline system, with more than 90 per cent of its drinking water. If this plant, its pipelines, or associated power infrastructure were seriously damaged or destroyed, Riyadh would have to evacuate within a week.
Any direct attack on them by Iran would be considered a massive escalation, so perhaps it is a step too far for Tehran. Still, they don’t have many other options to prevail. Its only options are to hunker down, in the hope that a long-lasting conflict becomes economically too painful for its enemies, or go after so-called soft targets like energy sites, airports and water installations. Let’s hope the Islamic Republic, feeling cornered and fighting for its survival, doesn’t take this last step because, while oil is essential, water is irreplaceable.
So far, "Operation Epic Fury" has been a stunning aerial success, but have Trump and America the willpower and the military power to fight a prolonged war against a desperate regime fighting for its very survival? Or will they, after having bombed the place back into the stone-age, pull out again, as they did in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan?
Friedrich Nietzsche lived a troubled adolescence, stemming from the intense difficulty he had in spelling his own name. This difficulty has continued to this day in the spelling of his name in bathroom graffiti and on t-shirts proclaiming "What doesn't kill me, makes me stronger" (neither does arthritis but it doesn't make me stronger).
As for pronouncing his name, I much rather talk about Freud - whose name is also easier to spell - but a useful mnemonic is to cast your mind back to your first girlfriend and the time when you whispered into her ear "I Nietzsche more than ever!" just before she stood you up.
Now that we have both the spelling and the pronunciation out of the way, enjoy the movie "When Nietzsche Wept" which is based on Irvin D. Yalom's book of the same name. It blends both fact and fiction and offers you the chance to nod knowingly next time someone mentions Nietzsche to you or drops the word 'limerence' (look it up, Des!)
The only online copy I could find is in Chinese 😁 - click here
For my money, the passage "It is wrong to bear children out of need, wrong to use a child to alleviate loneliness, wrong to provide purpose in life by reproducing another copy of oneself. It is wrong also to seek immortality by spewing one's germ into the future as though sperm contains your consciousness!" gives me my much-needed excuse because, you see, I did my children a favour by not having them!
If you disagree with the land value on your notice of valuation or land tax assessment, you can lodge an objection. You will need to provide sales evidence from around 1 July in the valuing year to support your objection. If you do not provide supporting evidence, your objection will be disallowed."
Thus wrote the Valuer-General when he sent me these two Notices of Valuation which total $2,880,000. That value EXcludes the house and all other structures, and is $250,000 higher than the previous valuations three years ago, and is used to calculate the annual council rates.
Yes, I would very much like to object to the Valuer-General's assessment as I already pay council rates of about $500 A MONTH, which is far too much to pay for the privilege of living on my own piece of dirt.
But how do I provide the required "sales evidence from around 1 July in the valuing year" when "Riverbend" is so unique that no similar property of this size and in this location has been sold since I bought it in 1993?
I guess I will be stuck with it until I sell it — at no more than land value.
Ich wanderte im Jahre 1965 vom (k)alten Deutschland nach Australien aus. In Erinnerung an das alte Sprichwort "Gott hüte mich vor Sturm und Wind und Deutschen die im Ausland sind" wurde ich in 1971 im Dschungel von Neu-Guinea australischer Staatsbürger. Das kostete mich nur einen Umlaut und das zweite n im Nachnamen - von -mann auf -man.
Australien gab mir eine zweite Sprache und eine zweite Chance und es war auch der Anfang und das Ende: nach fünfzig Arbeiten in fünfzehn Ländern - "Die ganze Welt mein Arbeitsfeld" - lebe ich jetzt im Ruhestand in Australien an der schönen Südküste von Neusüdwales.
Ich verbringe meine Tage mit dem Lesen von Büchern, segle mein Boot den Fluss hinunter, beschäftige mich mit Holzarbeit, oder mache Pläne für eine neue Reise. Falls Du mir schreiben willst, sende mir eine Email an riverbendnelligen [AT] mail.com, und ich schreibe zurück.
Falls Du anrufen möchtest, meine Nummer ist XLIV LXXVIII X LXXXI.
This blog is written in the version of English that is standard here. So recognise is spelled recognise and not recognize etc. I recognise that some North American readers may find this upsetting, and while I sympathise with them, I sympathise even more with my countrymen who taught me how to spell. However, as an apology, here are a bunch of Zs for you to put where needed.
Zzzzzz
Disclaimer
This blog has no particular axe to grind, apart from that of having no particular axe to grind. It is written by a bloke who was born in Germany at the end of the war (that is, for younger readers, the Second World War, the one the Americans think they won single-handedly). He left for Australia when most Germans had not yet visited any foreign countries, except to invade them. He lived and worked all over the world, and even managed a couple of visits back to the (c)old country whose inhabitants he found very efficient, especially when it came to totting up what he had consumed from the hotels' minibars. In retirement, he lives (again) in Australia, but is yet to grow up anywhere.
He reserves the right to revise his views at any time. He might even indulge in the freedom of contradicting himself. He has done so in the past and will most certainly do so in the future. He is not persuading you or anyone else to believe anything that is reported on or linked to from this site, but encourages you to use all available resources to form your own opinions about important things that affect all our lives and to express them in accordance with Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Everything on this website, including any material that third parties may consider to be their copyright, has been used on the basis of “fair dealing” for the purposes of research and study, and criticism and review. Any party who feels that their copyright has been infringed should contact me with details of the copyright material and proof of their ownership and I will remove it.
And finally, don't bother trying to read between the lines. There are no lines - only snapshots, most out of focus.
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