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The recently released movie Quartet is not yet available on DVD, so we went to our local Bay City Cinemas for a midday viewing.
I was just settling in with a small bag of popcorn - which, incidentally, these days sets you back $4.80! - and beginning to enjoy the story, when it was all over. I didn't mind so much that the movie had no real beginning but what about the end? There wasn't one!
Suddenly the lights came back on and I was left wondering what I had been watching. Just as well they gave me a $1 Seniors Discount on the ticket price of $11.50.
You know you're retired when you know all the answers but nobody ever asks you the questions.
We expect to be "stuck" here at "Riverbend" for a few more years as there aren't enough buyers with sufficient cash around.
Our last visitors were as enamoured with Bali as we are which made us think: why not buy a property in Bali and share it with four like-minded people (or couples)?
Is $100,000 too much to pay for a second home in Bali in which to spend three months of every year? Three months are just about the right length of time to really enjoy Bali and three-month visas are readily available on arrival.
$100,000 for a quarter-share in a property as exquisite as the one shown here is cheap: a large 130 square-metre main building, a smaller 40 square-metre guesthouse, a 90 square-metre 2-metre deep pool, a jacuzzi and several pavillons, and the whole lot set on a landscaped block of 4,430 square-metres which is large by Australian standards and huge in Bali.
And the property is in the north of Bali, away from the tourists, where Bali still is as Bali used to be. And it is in the hills at an elevation of more than a 100 metres where it is cooler and where there are no mosquitoes. And the views out to sea and neighbouring Java Island are something to die for! There is just one problem: three months a year may not be long enough!
Of course, everything would be legally drawn up. You might lose your pale complexion but not your shirt.
Interested? Email me! riverbend@batemansbay.com
P.S. This is just a thought bubble. I could afford to go it alone but the thought of such a beautiful property standing empty for three-quarters of the year offends me. It's the sort place that ought to be shared with like-minded people.
It's been almost eight years since my trip to Thursday Island and well over 35 years since I lived and worked on Thursday Island, but this clip brings back lots of memories.
Note to Andy, Morris and Wally: EIGHT YEARS!!! Isn't it time for another trip to Thursday Island? Say when and I'll be there!
In a sudden bout of oniomania - no, it has nothing to do with onions although I am rather fond of cheese-and-onion sandwiches - I bought a PHILIPS soundmachine which will allow me to copy cassettes to a memory stick. It does not - and the brochure didn't make this clear - copy cassettes onto CD. Instead, it can copy a CD onto a cassette but who wants to do that?
The old cassettes I speak of are mainly audio books: A Fortunate Life by A.B. Facey; Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder; The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers; Taim Bilong Masta; and many others. Several of those "books" conveniently fit onto one memory stick.
Studies show that married men live longer than unmarried men. Some men say it just feels longer.
Reading Gavin Young's In Search of Conrad has been a real treat and a revelation. There has indeed been a "Lord Jim" although his real name was Augustine Podmore Williams who, unlike the real "Lord Jim", lived to the age of 64 and was buried in 1916 in a since long-forgotten cemetery in Singapore.
And there has been a real "Olmeijer" about whom Conrad wrote in Almayer's Folly - the story was even made into a movie which I shall try to get.
And, of course, Conrad's Lingard and Almayer Country, Borneo, is today as mysterious as it was then despite now being called Kalimantan. And Celebes is now Sulawesi, and Makassar, the source of Macassar oil, is now called Ujung Pandang.
The men's fashion for oiled hair - oiled with Macassar oil, that is - had become so widespread in the Victorian and the Edwardian period that housewives began to cover the arms and backs of their chairs with washable cloths to preserve the fabric coverings from being soiled. This small cloth became known as an antimacassar - or should that now be an anti-ujungpandang?
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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