Walk into Paradise

 

 

Everyone who's lived and worked in New Guinea would have watched "Walk into Paradise@, starring Chips Rafferty, but do they know that one of the supporting actors, Fred Kaad, had been a real District Commissioner in Papua New Guinea?

This tribute reads like something out of "Boy's Own":

 

Click on images to enlarge

 

By the way, while the full-length feature film "Walk into Paradise" is on YouTube now, it may not last, so why not buy yourself your own copy on DVD? At $10 it's the cheapest PNG-souvenir you can buy! Click here.

 

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If it's Thursday, it must be "Pension Day"

 

 

Judging by the long queue in front of the cash register at the Moruya Bowling Club's restaurant, it was! At eleven dollars a meal (twelve dollars for non-members), it beats cooking and washing up - in fact, as one regular suggested (a lady from the former Yugoslavia near Trieste who, as she told me in very accented English, comes every day), you couldn't even buy the ingredients for that price.

I ordered bangers and mash - which, incongruously, came with a helping of sauerkraut - and Padma her usual battered fish'n'chips and we settled in for the wait, for which I had come prepared with "Innocent Reader - Reflections on Reading and Writing". I knew I already had a copy which I had read many years ago and which was in my library at home, and so I had picked up this spare copy for a couple of dollar at my favourite Vinnies shop, together with Martin Wolf's "The Shifts and the Shocks - What we've learned - and have still to learn - from the financial crisis".

 

 

Debra Adelaide's book went well with the bangers and mash, but Martin Wolf's book will have to wait until I find the time to plough through its five hundred pages. So many books yet to read and so little time left!

 

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"Pretend it's 1995!"

 

 

As I had been fasting since eight o'clock last night for this morning's blood test, I left the house on an empty stomach not unlike the countless mornings when I was still working and in too much of a hurry to have a proper breakfast.

The pathology request was for "CK; Glucose Fasting; LFT; Lipis with HDL (Fasting); Triplycerides; EUC; CRP; ESR; FBC; Microalbumin Urine / Freehand Tests: Ca, Mg, Vit D / Clinical Notes: IHD, on Denosumab", and my favourite Irish phlebotomist, Shauna (or Seána), was ready whenever I was to stick it up my vein. Mercifully, I was on my own when it came to giving a urine sample. "Where appropriate, pull back the foreskin", the male instructions read. There were also instructions for females, but none for 'in-betweeners'. SOUTHERN PATHOLOGY must be 'old school'.

With my stomach still grumbling, we rushed across the street to our favourite tea rooms and placed our orders: two still-hot-from-the-oven scones thick with cream and strawberry jam and a plunger coffee for Padma, and ditto plus a pot of tea for moi (and the same treat for my favourite phlebotomist which I took across the street to let her know that her gentle probing for my vein had not been entirely in vain).

Next to us sat an elderly man who had also been a German - the country seems to be thick with them! - and so we talked in the same lingo, to the dislike of another couple sitting on the opposite side. Not wanting to start another war, we switched back to English, not because it's the only language WE knew but because it's the only language THEY knew.

He - the German - had been a self-employed tradesman for most of his life and probably earned more money than I ever had, and yet here he was, retired on the government's age pension or, not to put too fine a point on it, depending on welfare. Blissfully unaware of the Rule of 72 and what Albert Einstein once called the "eighth wonder of the world" - compound interest; "he who understands it, earns it; he who doesn't, pays it" - he'd spent all his "cash in hand" money at the end of each day.

Not that he was hard up - how could he be when the government paid him and his wife $1,777.00 a fortnight regardless of how much tax, if any, he had ever paid - as he lived in his own house and, despite having been a careless spender all his life, simply couldn't help himself having almost accidentally accumulated some substantial savings without losing his government welfare cheque (a couple living in their own home can still have almost half a million dollars in the bank before the age pension cuts out completely). We congratulated ourselves on living in this country: he for getting a free ride from the government, and I for getting a tax-free income in retirement from my own investments.

It was time to pay the bill. "That'll be fifty-one dollars, hon", said the nice lady at the door. I'm not sure if she said 'hon' or 'Hun' as she had been listening in on our German conversation but I gave her the benefit of the doubt. And did I tell you they also had a 'Craft Shop' where Padma had bought some 'crafty' things, and I had picked up from their 'Book Nook' "The Good Soldier Svejk", which I hadn't read since my schooldays.

I handed her a tenner and, pointing to the sign on the wall behind her, said, "Pretend it's 1995!" (I'm only kidding; I even left a generous tip!)

And I left a feedback with SOUTHERN PATHOLOGY: "In this busy and crazy world we too often forget to give a thought to those who, tirelessly and with a smile, do their duty. I went for a blood test at your clinic in Moruya today. Being a 'Doc Martin' when it comes to blood, I was hoping for a gentle bloodletting, and got it from my favourite phlebotomist, Shauna (or Seána). It was over and done with before I could even feel sorry for myself! I hope Shauna will continue working with you for as long as I continue getting my blood tested!"

 

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A thousand thanks, or rather 2028 thanks, to Allen and Unwin for publishing this political satire

 

For an audio sample, click here

 

2028. Prime Minister Fitzwilliams' instincts tell him it's time to call a snap election. His cabinet team is adequate (just), the howling protests of the doctors after the GP changes has finally died down and, best of all, the Australian Greens are in receivership. So what could possibly go wrong?

The PM is prepared for everything until he finds himself facing what he least expected - an actual opposition. How do you deal with a party that doesn't play by the rules, protests in the nude, sends mail by carrier pigeon and has a list of candidates all called Ned Ludd?

Welcome to the Australia of 2028 where parking meters double as poker machines, radio shock jocks have been automated, the Communist Party of China has turned itself into a multinational corporation and ASIO's glory days are so far over that it's resorting to surveillance of a Charles Dickens reading group."

So reads the backcover of this book, and it gets even better on the inside because this book is very funny but, unfortunately, also very close to reality and only three years away. I wish I could vote for Ned Ludd.

 

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Look what I found on the internet!

 

 

These are photos of the "Mofarrij-D" (built 1960, LOA 172.9m, GT 17,826, DW 25,867) and the "Mofarrij-G" (built 1963, GT 15,985, DW 26,432), two of six ageing bulk carriers which my Saudi boss Sheikh Abdulghani Abdulrahiem Mofarrij, in a sudden rush of blood to his head, had bought in mid-1983.

I will never forget the day he asked me to accompany him to the offices of the Greek shipping company INTERTRANS in Piraeus. There a Greek lawyer presented him with a whole ream of legal papers, entirely drawn up in the Greek language, which documented his purchase of six rustbuckets that would become the company fleet of "Mofarrij-A", "Mofarrij-B", "Mofarrij-C" "Mofarrij-D", "Mofarrij-F", and "Mofarrij-G".

Despite my whispered urgings not to sign anything he could not read, let alone buy ships which, judged by their appearance, where in worse shape than Lord Jim's "Patna", he initialled every page and signed on the dotted line.

Not surprisingly, all six vessels went to the knackers in Chittagong in Bangladesh and Huangpu in China less than two years later but by that time I had already resigned from my position as Group Financial Controller as I simply couldn't bear to see the business go down the toilet through sheer stupidity.

See related story TAREing my hair out.

 

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