A mate from my Bougainville days who, after a lifetime of living and working in the islands and the Middle East and South East Asia, turned domestic in Malaysia, is moving house Malaysian-style not one day but one piece at a time.
He now lives in bustling and beautiful Penang where I worked for a year in 1978 as consultant to the Penang Port Commission. I loved it there and in several other places around the world where I used to work, and I have sometimes wondered what life might now be like if I had stayed on. What if I had stayed in New Guinea - no, not in today's New Guinea! - or in Burma or Samoa or Malaysia, or in Greece, or even tiny Thursday Island? Plenty of what-ifs with absolutely no time left to act on them.
Another Australian colleague from the old days on Bougainville, who eventually put down roots in the USA, recently emailed me the scanned image of a postcard I had mailed him from Mackay in 1980. On the back I had written: "Journey's End! Settled in Mackay. A comfortable small town, beautiful beaches, National Parks, a booming sugar and tourist industry to supply the necessary dollar, who wants to go anywhere else, especially overseas?" Famous last words! Thanks for rubbing it in, Des!
The only what-if that matters right now is what if Putin wins in Ukraine; what if Xi Jinping overplays his Shanghai lockdown and gets toppled; what if Labor wins the election? With all that uncertainly, is it any wonder the sharemarket tanked? What if I had sold out two weeks ago? I would be one hell of a lot better off now but I'm trying to stay sanguine about it (how I've been wanting to use that word to confuse you, Des!)
If you're interested in these and other matters, you may wish to tune in to Amanda Vanstone's regular ABC Radio National talk "Counterpoint". After all, it ain't over till the fat lady talks.
