This test only has one question, but it is a very important one, so your answer needs to be honest

 

TThis test features an unlikely, completely fictional situation in which you will have to make a decision. Only you will know the results, so your answer needs to be honest.

 

THE SITUATION:

You are in Kakadu to be specific. There is chaos all around you caused by a cyclone with severe flooding. This is a flood of biblical proportions. You are a photojournalist working for a major newspaper, and you're caught in the middle of this epic disaster. The situation is nearly hopeless. You're trying to shoot career-making photos. There are houses and people swirling around you, some disappearing under the water.

THE TEST:

Suddenly you see a man in the water. He's fighting for his life, trying not to be taken down with the debris. You move closer. Somehow the man looks familiar. You suddenly realise who it is. It's Anthony Albanese!

YOU HAVE TWO OPTIONS:

You can save the life of Albo (the - ahem! - Australian Prime Minister) or you can shoot a dramatic prize-winning photo documenting the death of one of the world's most powerful Lefties hell-bent on the destruction of Australia.

THE QUESTION: (and, please, do give an honest answer)

Would you select high-contrast colour film or would you go with the classic simplicity of black and white?

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I'd be like the dog that caught the bus

 

To which I replied, "Please let me know by phone or email if and when you would like to come down from Canberra for a quick look at the place. It'll be 'what you see is what you get' because we're through with agents and all their staged inspections by 'pre-qualified' buyers. This is an honest sale at what we believe is an honest price (of course, it would've been a lot cheaper had you bought twenty years ago but that was then :-)"

Well, today is the day after the day before when they rolled up in a car so huge it had the words "Hire Purchase" written all over all. And, as so many times before, they also weren't looking for a family home but for another "get-rich-quick-scheme", thinking that I was some kind of daft country yokel who didn't recognise the potential of the eight separate blocks of land I was sitting on. Rather than abusing them for wasting my time, I quickly disabused them of their notion that they could sell off those eight separate blocks and laugh at me all the way to the bank.

In typical Riverbend fashion, we gave them our usual "coffee and cake" hospitality and ended up talking about everything else except real estate. After all, not only had they put an end to our usual euphoric feelings of having found a possible buyer but also to our conflicting dread of having to pack up the accumulation of thirty years' living and wondering what to do next. Of course, if it had come to a serious deal, I'd probably have felt like the proverbial dog that had caught the bus.

As an afterthought, I've removed all mention of the eight separate blocks from the advertisement which, instead of reading "This truly unique property consists of eight parcels of land, totalling some seven acres on eight separate freehold titles and for sale as one lot. The smallest block is 3313m and the largest 3700m. The blocks are strung out like a necklace along the banks of the Clyde River with over 400 metres of absolute waterfront to highwater mark", now simply states, "This truly unique property, totalling some seven acres, stretches for over 400 metres along the Clyde River". Fewer words, less trouble!

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Einführung in die englische Sprache

"Introduction to the English Language"
still available on ebay

 

Now Mr. Turner opens his eyes. He gets a shock. His body is covered with red spots. There are spots on his hands, on his fingers, on his arms, on his legs, on his feet, on his chest. He jumps out of the bath. He takes a towel and rubs hard. The spots are still there."

And so is my old copy of "Einführung in die englische Sprache", whose terse Hemingway-style prose helped me take my first steps into the bewildering world of the English language. Then the Australian embassy sent me booklets in Basic English, designed by the British linguist Charles Ogden as an auxiliary international language of 850 words, comprising a system that covers everything necessary for day-to-day purposes. These 850 words, together with its five combinatory rules, were designed to do the work of some 20,000 words - and here they are! (under QUALITIES, there's beautiful, black, bright, brown, but not the most widely used expletive I encountered when I set foot in Australia!)

I've never since then built a rockery or lost an umbrella and I'm trying to stay away from doctors as much as I can, but I did apply for and worked in lots of job - more than fifty in more than a dozen countries at last count! As for complaining, who'd be listening anyway?

 

I've since expanded my vocabulary beyond those 850 words - although I've drawn the line at 'awesome', 'going forward', 'at this point in time', and 'LGBTQIA+' (when I was a kid, the great debate was about how to defeat the Soviet Union. Now we are told that the great debate is about who gets to use which bathroom. Perhaps the war in Ukraine will reorder our priorities and restore some sanity) - but I still keep my copy of "Einführung in die englische Sprache" in case I missed anything!

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How the shipping container made the world smaller and the world economy bigger

 

 

Drawing on previously neglected sources, economist Marc Levinson shows how the container transformed economic geography, devastating traditional ports such as New York and London which had not yet facilities to handle them.

When in 1978 the PriceWaterhouseAssociates team - which included yours truly - acted as consultants to the Penang Port Commission (PPC), it gave no thought to this already emerging phenomenon in its traffic and revenue forecasts but instead revalued existing port structures and recalculated depreciation rates as if the age of breakbulk cargo in what was essentially a port loaded and unloaded by lighters would never end.

The Penang Port Commission had been given a multi-million-dollar loan by the Asian Development Bank. As part of the bank's lending conditions, the Commission had to engage a team of consultants to review its procedures, and PriceWaterhouseAssociations was chosen. Our cost was just an added percentage point to the bank's interest rate, and I was chosen as head of the team as much for my past experience in shipping as for the colour of my passport, as Australia was one of the members of the Asian Development Bank. In foreign aid everything is political!

 

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This farce was made even more farcical as all the team's reports turned out to be almost mirror images of reports previously written by one of the team members for the port of Mogadishu in Somalia. I had not been aware of this fact until the fly-in-fly-out PWA "supervisor" during one of his frequent visits only half-jokingly remarked, "We'd all be in deep shit if ever our photocopier breaks down and we could no longer simply replace the word 'Mogadishu' with the word 'Penang' in all our reports."

 

 

Until that moment I had always stood in admiring awe as I watched that particular team member arrive in the office each morning, gaze for a while into the middle distance while tapping a long pencil against his puckered lips, and then, with astonishing ease and seemingly out of thin air, drew up reports of amazing erudition. The only thing amazing about this feat was his photographic memory with which he recalled those Mogadishu reports which he had committed to memory the night before.

 

US$1 was worth approx. AUS$0.88; therefore, US$27,000 = AUS$23,760
which was about twice an accountant's average salary in Australia in 1978

 

That kind of fake "management consulting" convinced me that I was in the wrong profession and I never worked for one of the "Big Five" (as they were then) accounting firms again. However, it is all grist for the mill as I read "The Box" which is the amazing story of how the humble shipping container reshaped shipping and with it the global economy.

 

 

After all, there's no better emblem of globalisation today than the container ship, which has made transport so cheap that it's more cost-efficient to catch a fish in Scotland, send it to China to be filletted, then send it back to Europe for sale, than to hire labourers in situ.

 

Read a preview here

 

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The mystery of existence

 

Ulladulla Harbour

 

We drove to Ulladulla where we had lunch at the local bowling club. Their meatloaf is a treat and I washed it down with a glass (or two) of riesling.

The same friendly young man who always collects the empties was on duty. Tongue firmly in cheek, I suggested that he must be due for long service leave soon. "Actually, I am due for my 10-year long service leave next month," he replied.

I looked at him again and tried to visualise what his life had been like, collecting empty glasses for the past ten years, and what his future would be. Perhaps, when the old steward behind the bar had retired, our young man would take over as barman, and in due course retire himself and hand over to another young man who has been collecting empty glasses for the past ten years.

Do such men have dreams? Do they live lives of quiet desperation? Or are they happy with their lot? Perhaps they have found the solution to the mystery of existence which is to say that there is no great mystery at all because human existence is mostly about food, sleep, sex, and finding harmless and pleasant ways to fill in the rest.

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