Sieh nach den Sternen - gib acht auf die Gassen!

 

So stand es auf der Vorderseite meines Abschlusszeugnis vom 18. März 1960 von der Volksschule Heinrichstraße in meiner Heimatstadt Braunschweig welches ich für über sechzig Jahre mit mir durch die ganze Welt schleppte.

Aber wer in Australien oder Südafrika oder Neu-Guinea oder Birma oder Iran oder Samoa oder Malaysien oder Saudi Arabien oder Griechenland wollte denn schon wissen daß ich in allen Fächern "sehr gut" hatte - ausser Religion und Naturlehre wo es nur ein "gut" gab weil ich immer wieder die Spanische Inquisition erwähnte und mehr wissen wollte als wie es die Kaulquappen machten, und Musik "befriedigend", Zeichnen "ausreichend", Werken "befriedigend", und Sport "mangelhaft"?

 

 

Also wurde aus mir kein Mozart und auch kein Dürer und schon gar nicht ein Fritz Walter, sondern nur ein ganz langweiliger Buchhalter und dann Wirtschaftsprüfer und Wirtschaftsberater und Komputerprogrammierer.

Es dauerte mehr als sechzig Jahre bis mir plötzlich klar wurde daß das Wichtigste an diesem Abschlusszeugnis nicht die Zensuren in den Innenseiten waren sondern das Wilhelm Raabe Zitat auf der Vorderseite.

Für mehr als sechzig Jahre war ich ein Träumer gewesen. Jetzt, nachdem ich in meinem Leben in vielen Sackgassen gelandet bin, ist mir endlich klar geworden daß ich dem Wilhelm Raabe hätte zuhören sollen:

Sieh nach den Sternen - gib acht auf die Gassen!

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I'm a member of the Apostrophe Protection Society

Having used up the felt-tipped pen on redundant apostrophes,
there was no ink left for the hyphen between RE and OPEN

 

Yesterday we had a most satisfying lunch at the Sawatdee Thai Restaurant which is authentically Thai except for the dinky-di waitress who didn't even know what "sawatdee" meant, let alone give us the customary "wai" greeting.

Instead, tattoos and boots and all, she unceremoniously dumped two menus on our table but then served us the most delicious garlic-pepper prawns we haven't had for such a long time that we swore we'll be back there again next week. On the way back to the car, we passed this little fashionable la-di-da boutique crammed full with stuff no-one needs and apostrophes everyone hates. The shop may be open from 10 am to 3 pm on "Tuesday's, Wednesday's, Friday's" but the only time I'd ever go in would be with a wet sponge to wipe off those redundant apostrophes.

 

For more, click here

 

Dont [sic] you just hate it when people cant [sic] seem to get the hang of the humble apostrophe? Every week I see literally 100's [sic] of examples of it's [sic] improper use. Signs' [sic], book's [sic] and even newspapers' [sic] have been known to get it wrong. Its [sic] not bloody rocket science! Use in the event of substituting a letter or letters (such as "can't" for "can not"), or in the possessive (except the possessive of "it"). Do not use for plural's [sic]. In the case of a possessive plural, the apostrophe goes after the s. Now write that out a hundred time's [sic].

 

 

Having been a paid-up member of the Apostrophe Protection Society for many years, I shoved a membership application form under their door.

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P.S. ... and why is there such frequent misuse of the apostrophe? This cartoon may help to explain it:

 

Hier wohne ich

 

 

Und schon seit über dreißig Jahren! Wie schnell die Zeit vergangen ist! Für zwanzig Jahre in aller Welt war mein Motto "Die ganze Welt mein Arbeitsfeld" gewesen. Jetzt ist es "Hier sitze ich, ich kann nicht anders!"

Vielleicht liegt es am Altwerden oder daran daß ich jetzt viel zu viel Kram am Hals habe um alles je wieder einzupacken und wegzuziehen.

Übrigens kannst Du "Riverbend" ganz kurz am Punkt 2:15 sehen, mußst aber aufpassen denn es ist nur so am unteren Rand des Bildes zu sehen.

Vielleicht setze ich solch einen 'drone' auf meinen Wunschzettel und mach dann meine eigenen Aufnahmen. Bis dann!

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An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West

 

 

Do yourself a favour and listen to Konstantin Kisin - all of it! This man makes so much sense and says so many thing too many of us are too afraid to say! I've already ordered his book from the U.K. and can't wait to receive it in the mail.

 

 

Konstantin Kisin is a journalist, comedian, voiceover actor and social commentator. Born in the Soviet Union, where he experienced both untold wealth and grinding poverty, he moved to the UK when he was 13 years old. Now an award-winning performer, he co-presents the popular YouTube series TRIGGERnometry alongside Francis Foster. Together, they've interviewed some of the most in-demand intellectuals of our age, such as Douglas Murray, Jordan Peterson and many others. "An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West" is his first book.

 

 

Read a preview of this book here. Or at least read the preface!

And keep listening here:

 

 

He makes so so so much sense!

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We're just raking it in!

"Stilleben" at "Riverbend"

 

STANLEY and I are really raking it in: barrow after barrow of fallen leaves, to be composted for next spring's vegetable garden. It's all quite reminiscent of my childhood in the (c)old country where we used to built castles out of fallen leaves in autumn, and then out of fallen snow in winter.

Funny how I even still remember the songs, word for word, we all used to sing at school; "Bunt sind schon die Wälder" was just one of them.

 

 

Bunt sind schon die Wälder, Gelb die Stoppelfelder Und der Herbst beginnt. Rote Blätter fallen, Graue Nebel wallen, Kühler weht der Wind. Wie die volle Traube Aus dem Rebenlaube Purpurfarbig strahlt. Am Geländer reifen Pfirsiche, mit Streifen Rot und weiß bemalt. Geige tönt und Flöte Bei der Abendröte Und im Mondenglanz. Junge Winzerinnen Winken und beginnen Frohen Erntetanz.

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Those little old ladies at our favourite op-shop

from left to right: Marti, Donna, Ida, Padma

 

They're not quite as entertaining as this lot but they're always having a good laugh, although today's hilarity was tempered with sadness as Ida is moving to Queensland to be with her family. Padma had bought her a cake as a farewell present.

None of which stopped me from fossicking for more books: Don Watson's "Bendable Learnings";Tony Kevin's "Walking the Camino"; Brian Freeman's "The Lost Battlefield of Kokoda"; and an absolute gem, Ralph Keyes' "The Writer's Book of Hope". I also "rescued" two DVDs to give to neighbours who I know will enjoy them: "The Lady in the Van" and "My Old Lady".

Goodbye, Ida! We shall miss you!

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The sameness! The sameness!

 

Some days it feels like a toss-up between Kurtz's "The horror! The horror!" in "Heart of Darkness" and Edvard Munch's "The Scream". It has never been explained what the scream was, but "The sameness! The sameness!" would've been my guess.

After all, we're all made of the same stuff, and while every caveman aspired to a bigger and better cave than his Neanderthal neighbour, which he then decorated with rock paintings and kept cosy with a fire and animal hides, there must've come a time when he just wanted to scream "The sameness! The sameness!" and chuck it all in and run off.

Of all the cities in the world, domesticity can be the worst of all, and for over twenty years I kept away from rock paintings and never kept animal hides. Unencumbered, I could always chuck it all in and run off.

Then "Riverbend" happened and I've been busy collecting rock paintings and animal hides - and books! - until, thirty years later, I look around me in horror and feel like screaming "The sameness! The sameness!"

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Etwas zum Abgewöhnen

 

Für drei Monate schickt das ZDF zwei deutsche Familien ans andere Ende der Welt. Der Zielort: ein fernes kleines Eiland im Pazifik - bewohnt von einer Hand voll Einheimischen. Die Inseln der Südsee - traumhafte Orte, die Sehnsüchte wecken nach weißen Stränden, azurblauem Meer und einer Hängematte zwischen Palmen. Mythos Südsee - oder nur ein Klischee? Von 400 Bewerbern für das Südsee-Abenteuer wählte das ZDF die Familien aus. Sie haben in der Erlebnis-dokumentation "Traumfischer" die Chance, das Leben auf einer Südsee-Insel kennen zu lernen. Anfang August 2004 begannen die Dreharbeiten. Schon in der ersten Woche mussten die Familien erkennen: Das Leben in der Südsee ist nicht nur Sonnenschein und Vergnügen pur.

 

Man träumt ja immer noch von den Südsee-Inseln obwohl ich von meinen vielen Jahren in Neu-Guinea und den Solomonen-Inseln und in Samoa weiß daß der Alltag auch ganz anders aussehen kann.

Naja, Träume helfen auch durch den hiesigen Alltag zu kommen. Also, hier ist dann der zweite Teil zum Abgewöhnen:

 

 

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To an old and very dear friend

 

Basically your friends are not your friends for any particular reason. They are your friends for no particular reason. The job you do, the family you have, the way you vote, the major achievements and blunders of your life, your religious convictions or lack of them, are all somehow set off to one side when the two of you get together.

If you are old friends, you know all those things about each other and a lot more besides, but they are beside the point. Even if you talk about them, they are beside the point. Stripped, humanly speaking, to the bare essentials, you are yourselves the point. The usual distinctions of older-younger, richer-poorer, smarter-dumber, male-female even, cease to matter. You meet with a clean slate every time, and you meet on equal terms. Anything may come of it or nothing may. That doesn't matter either. Only the meeting matters.

 

left-to-right: yours truly, Padma, Doug
(... and if you think my face reminds you of someone, you're not alone - click here)

 

Doug Fry is such a friend. Some friends are more or less replaceable with other friends. Doug is not. I first met him almost sixty years ago, in 1965, just months after my arrival in what would eventually become my adopted home Australia. We were both keen Youth Hostellers - see here - and while I never stopped still and for the next twenty years travelled the world, I could always count on Doug being there when I returned to Canberra, first in 1969, and again in 1977 and 1979, and finally in 1986 after I had returned permanently from my last posting in Saudi Arabia.

 

left-to-right: Padma, Doug, Jung Hee

 

Today's trip to Canberra to renew Padma's passport at the Indonesian embassy was my first visit to the old stamping ground in almost twenty years, and what better way to spend the rest of the day in the nation's capital than to catch up with my longest and oldest friend before old age catches up with both of us. Many, many thanks to Doug and his charming wife Jung Hee for their amazing hospitality and for making this one of the most memorable days I have had in years. Let there be many more memorable meetings before we're both too old to travel.

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Mein Leben im Lied

 

Hannes Wader, "Heute hier, morgen dort"

 

Heute hier, morgen dort, bin kaum da, muss ich fort Hab mich niemals deswegen beklagt Hab es selbst so gewählt, nie die Jahre gezählt Nie nach Gestern und Morgen gefragt Manchmal träume ich schwer, und dann denk ich es wär Zeit zu bleiben und nun was ganz andres zu tun So vergeht Jahr um Jahr und es ist mir längst klar Dass nichts bleibt, dass nichts bleibt, wie es war Dass man mich kaum vermisst, schon nach Tagen vergisst Wenn ich längst wieder anderswo bin Stört und kümmert mich nicht, vielleicht bleibt mein Gesicht Doch dem Ein' oder Andern im Sinn Manchmal träume ich schwer, und dann denk ich es wär Zeit zu bleiben und nun was ganz andres zu tun So vergeht Jahr um Jahr und es ist mir längst klar Dass nichts bleibt, dass nichts bleibt, wie es war Fragt mich einer, warum ich so bin, bleib ich stumm Denn die Antwort darauf fällt mir schwer Denn was neu ist, wird alt, und was gestern noch galt Stimmt schon heut oder morgen nicht mehr Manchmal träume ich schwer, und dann denk ich es wär Zeit zu bleiben und nun was ganz andres zu tun So vergeht Jahr um Jahr und es ist mir längst klar Dass nichts bleibt, dass nichts bleibt, wie es war

 

 

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Buy them up, knock them down!

 

The waterfront property at 3 Sproxton Lane went under the hammer but failed to sell; a few months later it sold in a private sale for an even two million dollars. Now it's gone under the hammer again - literally! - as the new owners are giving it a complete overhaul and facelift.

House by house, sleepy little Nelligen is dragged into the 21st century!

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People die only when we forget them

 

Hans Moehrke and I had met when he stayed at the SAVOY HOTEL in Piraeus where I was a permanent resident during my "Greek days". We breasted the bar on many nights and over many drinks, bemoaning the state of the world and our place in it, in three languages: Afrikaans, English and German.

We were both in commodity trading: I mainly in grains, in lots of 20,000, 30,000, even 50,000 tonnes at a time, whereas Hans was more into pork bellies for which there wasn't much demand from my Saudi masters.

We stayed in touch after my return to Australia in 1985, sometimes through an occasional phone call but more often through letters which became more sporadic after Hans had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease which made it impossible for him to write.

His last message was a small parcel containing a detective novel by Colin Dexter with the prescient title, "Death Is Now My Neighbour", because less than a year later, on this day in 2015, Hans passed away at his home in beautiful Constantia just outside Cape Town. Totsiens, Hans!

Rest in Peace, Hans.
People die only when we forget them.
I shan't forget you.

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My "Cabooltier" Past

 

What makes Caboolture real fruit yoghurt so much tastier?
Well out here the birds are chirpier, the air is cleanier
The grass is greenier, the cows are happier
They make it much creamier, with fruit that’s fruitier
In bits much chunkier, the breeze blows gentlier
The whole world’s friendlier, and things are less hastier
That’s why it’s tastier. Caboolture real fruit yoghurt.
There’s nothing artificial about Caboolture.

 

Before the internet, vacant positions were advertised in newspapers, and for financial positions none were better than the big display ads in the Australian Financial Review.

They were the only ones I responded to. The bigger the better! I mean, why reply to a small classified? If that's all they could afford, they couldn't afford me! ☺

Indeed, the only classified that ever got me a job was the one I placed myself in an issue of PIM, the Pacific Islands Monthly, in 1969. From memory, it ran something like this: "Young Accountant (still studying) seeks position in the Islands." (decades later I visited the National Library in Canberra and had all twelve 1969-issues of PIM sent up from their archives, but I couldn't find the ad again).

That tiny classified got me my first job in the then Territory of Papua & New Guinea. The rest, as they say, is history because from then on it was display ads all the way through until 1979 when, having returned to Canberra from my last overseas assignment in Malaysia and finding life in suburbia wanting, I started a working holiday caravanning up and down the Australian east coast.

I travelled as far south as Melbourne, as far west as Mt Isa, and as far north as Cairns, and found myself in Brisbane by mid-June 1980. An old friend from my New Guinea days, Noel Butler, had just bought himself a small acreage near Caboolture north of Brisbane, so when I saw an accounting job advertised with the Caboolture Co-operative, I applied even though the ad was not 'display' nor was the job.

 

Noel (on right) visiting me at my 'mobile home' in the Northern Star Caravan Park in Brisbane

 

This dairy co-operative, owned and operated by the cow cockies in the district, had started its life as the Caboolture butter factory in 1907 which was also the age of its Dickensian office to which I was invited for an interview at the crack of dawn.

The interviewing panel was a bunch of cow cockies still wearing their cow-something-splattered wellies from the morning's milking. This was the real deal; there's nothing artificial about Caboolture!

They must've been wondering why this bright spark who'd just done a consulting job in Malaysia and been senior-this and chief-that in the past, wanted to be the accountant for an outfit whose only claim to fame, apart from their rightly famous yoghurt, was the production of a cheddar cheese speckled with peanuts and aptly named "Bjelke Blue". (Joh Bjelke-Petersen was the longest-serving and longest-lived as well as most controversial Premier of Queensland and also a peanut farmer - or, some might say, just a peanut!)

Mercifully, the cow cockies turned me down which, for a fleeting moment, made the birds sound a little less 'chirpier' and me feeling a little more ‘saddier’ as I would've had liked to hang around for a little bit 'longier' with Noel who'd been my best friend since our first chance meeting on a Europe-bound ship in late 1967.

Still, before long I was once again responding to display ads and roaming the world, and Noel remained my very best friend until his untimely death in 1995.

 

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The Rise and Fall of Australia

 

Everyone has heard of Donald Horne's "The Lucky Country" but hands up who's actually read it? Yep, thought so! Well, here's your chance to read its updated edition "The Rise and Fall of Australia - How a great nation lost its way" by Nick Bryant.

 

Read a preview here

 

In this thoroughly entertaining and thought-provoking book, dealing with politics, racism, sexism, the country’s place in the region and the world, culture and sport, the author argues that Australia needs to discard the out-dated language used to describe itself, to push back against Lucky Country thinking, to celebrate how the cultural creep has replaced the cultural cringe and to stop negatively typecasting itself. Rejecting most of the national stereotypes, Nick Bryant sets out to describe the new Australia rather than the mythic country so often misunderstood not just by foreigners but Australians themselves.

Fail to read it at your own peril.

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Book titles are not protected by copyright laws

 

Or else Nick Bryant would've already been sued by Joe Haldeman and Dexter Filkins when he published his latest book "The Forever War", which tells the story of how America’s political polarisation is 250 years in the making, and argues that the roots of its modern-day malaise are to be found in its troubled past.

 

 

It's on my list of books to read as soon as I've finished with Nick Bryant's equally spellbinding book "The Rise and Fall of Australia - How a great nation lost its way"; after all, all reading should begin about home.

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