I have a major sleep disorder; it's called "reading"

 

 

And I'm making the most of it while Padma is away in Indonesia. No, it wasn't "JAWS" I was reading last night, but Tim Marshall's "Prisoners of Geography", an essential primer on geopolitics, helping readers around the globe understand what’s happening in our fast-changing world.

 

Book Preview and Audiobook Preview

 

In this amazing book, Tim Marshall unveils the hidden forces that shape our world, revealing how geography is the silent architect of history and international relations. With a keen eye for detail and a wealth of first-hand experience in conflict zones, Marshall argues that the physical landscape — mountains, rivers, and borders — plays a decisive role in determining the fate of nations.

 

 

As you follow this book, from the expansive plains of Russia to the strategic waterways of the Middle East, you discover how geography influences everything from military strategy to economic development. Marshall deftly illustrates how the decisions made by world leaders are often dictated by their geographical realities, whether it’s China’s quest for resources or America’s oceanic buffers against invasion.

 

After having read his book all night, I could listen to him all day

 

Another sleepless night well spent!

 

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There's a horse loose in a hospital

 

 

Now, I don’t know if you’ve been following the news, but I’ve been keeping my ears open and it seems like everyone everywhere is super-mad about everything all the time. I try to stay a little optimistic, even though I will admit, things are getting pretty sticky.

Here’s how I try to look at it, and this is just me, this guy being the president, it’s like there’s a horse loose in a hospital. It’s like there’s a horse loose in a hospital. I think eventually everything’s going to be okay, but I have no idea what’s going to happen next. And neither do any of you, and neither do your parents, because there’s a horse loose in the hospital. It’s never happened before, no one knows what the horse is going to do next, least of all the horse. He’s never been in a hospital before, he’s as confused as you are.

There’s no experts. They try to find experts on the news. They’re like, “We’re joined now by a man that once saw a bird in the airport.” Get out of here with that shit! We’ve all seen a bird in the airport. This is a horse loose in a hospital.

When a horse is loose in a hospital, you got to stay updated. So all day long you walk around, “What’d the horse do?” The updates, they’re not always bad. Sometimes they’re just odd. It’ll be like, “The horse used the elevator?” I didn’t know he knew how to do that. The creepiest days are when you don’t hear from the horse at all. You’re down in the operating room like, “Hey, has anyone ... Has anyone heard -” [imitates clopping hooves] Those are those quiet days when people are like, “It looks like the horse has finally calmed down.” And then ten seconds later the horse is like, “I’m gonna run towards the baby incubators and smash ’em with my hooves. I’ve got nice hooves and a long tail, I’m a horse!” That’s what I thought you’d say, you dumb fucking horse.

And then ... then ... then you go to brunch with people and they’re like, “There shouldn’t be a horse in the hospital.” And it’s like, “We’re well past that.” Then, other people are like, “If there’s gonna be a horse in the hospital, I’m going to say the N-word on TV.” And those don’t match up at all.

And then, for a second, it seemed like maybe we could survive the horse, and then, 5,000 miles away, a hippo was like, “I have a nuclear bomb and I’m going to blow up the hospital!” And before we could say anything, the horse was like, “If you even fucking look at the hospital, I will stomp you to death with my hooves. I dare you to do it. I want you to do it. I want you to do it so I can stomp you with my hooves, I’m so fucking crazy.” “You think you’re fucking crazy, I’m a fucking hippopotamus. I live in a fucking lake of mud. I’m fucking crazy.” And all of us are like, “Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.” Like poor Andy Cohen at those goddamn reunions. “Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.”

And then, for a second, we were like, “Maybe the horse-catcher will catch the horse.” And then the horse is like, “I have fired the horse-catcher.” He can do that? That shouldn’t be allowed no matter who the horse is. I don’t remember that in Hamilton.

("Hamilton" is a hit broadway show about Alexander Hamilton, one of the United States' founding fathers. So he basically says "I don't remember that being in the constitutional powers of a president, but all my knowledge about is comes from a broadway show.)"

 

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They were relieved when they finally got the horse out of the hospital, but then, four years later, someone said, "You know, the sandwiches in the hospital cafeteria have got a bit expensive", so they decided to fix the problem by letting the horse back into the hospital, only by this time the horse had been there so long, it thought it was the doctor.

History teachers will be using this clip twenty years from now. And John Mulaney somehow did it without using the word “Trump” even once.

 

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A walk down memory lane

 

 

I left my home and my hometown of Braunschweig at the tender age of seventeen, first to work "auf Montage" as book-keeper for a large construction company that built autobahns all over Germany, and then, only twenty-one months later, to emigrate to Australia.

Two years later, I was back in Germany and hoping for a new career in South America with the German-South American Bank headquartered in Hamburg. Things didn't go to plan and so, like a bad penny and slightly tail-between-my-legs-like, I turned up on my parents' doorstep again.

They had never heard of Robert Frost's "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in". Instead, they must've remembered the equivalent German saying of "you have to be cruel to be kind", because they refused to take me in long enough to again get used to homecooked meals and having my bed made and laundry done.

Three months later, I was back on the road, but it took me a lot longer to realise that they had actually done me a favour by not taking me in again, because in hindsight I doubt that, without their "encouragement", I would have mustered the courage to once again set out on my own.

I've been "home" twice since then, both times on an Australian passport, which pretty well sums up where my home is now, and while I have no particular attachment to the (c)old country, I still occasionally visit it from the comfort of my Australian home via the internet and YouTube.

 

 

So much has changed, and yet, so much has stayed the same, such as the giant red MONTBLANC "Füllfederhalter" on the facade of the old Störig-Haus at the "Kohlmarkt". As a young boy, I used to look at it and dream of one day owning such an expensive - although more 'handy'-sized - MONTBLANC fountain pen. By the time I could afford one, it had already been replaced by the ubiquitous ballpoint pen, but while the stationery shop below it has since made way for a furniture store, the giant red fountain pen has been heritage-listed and will always be there to remind me of the time when, as an articled clerk, I was sent there by my boss to buy a "Buchhalternase" - but that's a story for another day.

 

I left Braunschweig in 1963. This photo is probably from the late 70s/early 80s but still shows the giant red MONTBLANC fountain pen as I remember it.

 

In addition to several YouTube clips of my hometown, there is this amazingly detailed www.braunschweig-bilder.de website, on which an Erik Kugland uploaded hundreds and hundreds of photographs of streets where I used to walk and work and live more than sixty years ago.

 

The office building at Münzstraße 2 where I served my articled years.
Click here for a full GOOGLE Map view; then move cursor to the top floor.
For more in German, click here.

 

There is the Cyriaksring where we used to live across from the "Arbeitsamt", and the "Volksschule" I attended in the Sophienstraße, before moving to the Altewiekring and the "Volksschule" in the Heinrichstraße, after which I served my articled years in in the Münzstraße. Of course, I sent Erik an email thanking him for the great job he's done and for this wonderful walk down memory lane.

 

Und zum Schluß ist hier noch was zum Abgewöhnen vom Karpfenessen:

 

Mehr als sechzig Jahre seitdem ich meinen letzten Karpfen gegessen habe, lernte ich jetzt warum er "Karpfen Blau" heißt - click at [22:00]. In Australien gilt der Karpfen als Schädling und wird nicht gegessen - außer von den Chinesen die ja alles essen was Beine und Flügel hat (allerdings machen auch sie eine Ausnahme bei Tischen und Flugzeugen ☺ )

 

 

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P.S. See also Elf Quadratmeter pro Person and Der neue Altewiekring 23 and Autres temps, autres moeurs

 

It's that time of year again

 

 

Death and taxes are two unavoidable certainties in life. I'm glad I learned as much as there is to know about taxes instead of, let's say, parallelograms which only comes in handy during parallelogram season, whereas the tax season starts on the 30th of June every year.

I must've signed off on literally hundreds of tax returns after the Registrar of Tax Agents for Papua New Guinea assigned me Tax Licence TTA222, but all that came to an end when I left Papua New Guinea at the end of 1974, and I lived and worked in countries with more benign tax regimes, or none at all (e.g. Burma and Kingdom of Saudi Arabia).

When I came back to Australia in 1985, I felt at first quite flattered when the nice people in the Australian Taxation Office sent me a letter, telling me that my tax return was 'outstanding', particular since I could not even remember sending them one.

Since then, for the past forty years, I've been sending a return every year, and for the last twenty-five years I've been sending three: one for my superfund, one for Padma, and one for myself. It's called 'income-splitting' to avoid the punitively high marginal tax rate of 45%, to say nothing of the Medicare Levy of 2%, or the Medicare Levy Surcharge of 1%, 1.25% or 1.5% in the absence of private patient hospital cover.

It's that time of year again, and I may start crunching the numbers this weekend - unless I can find an interesting book on Euclidean geometry.

 

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Das Wunder von Bern

 

Click on "CC" or "Settings" for English subtitles

 

The 1954 FIFA World Cup Final is often listed as one of the greatest matches in World Cup history, and also one of its most unexpected upsets. In Germany, it has become known as "Das Wunder von Bern" (The Miracle of Bern).

The game was played at the Wankdorf Stadium in Bern, Switzerland, on 4 July 1954, and saw West Germany beat the heavily favoured Golden Team of Hungary - also known as the "Mighty Magyars" - 3–2.

The unexpected win evoked a wave of euphoria throughout Germany, which suffered from a lack of international recognition in the aftermath of World War II. It was the first time since the Second World War that the German national anthem was played at a global sporting event.

 

To watch cuts from the real television broadcast, click here

 

I was there, an eight-year-old boy in a huge crowd, watching it on a small black-and-white television set left running for the occasion - but without sound - behind the window of a radio and television shop (it was a Sunday and all the shops were supposed to be closed). When the final whistle blew, we all hugged each other with tears in our eyes.

Some publicists described the 1954 victory as a turning point in post-war German history, notably Arthur Heinrich and Joachim Fest. In Fest's words: "It was a kind of liberation for the Germans from all the things that weighed down upon them after the Second World War ... July 4, 1954 is in certain aspects the founding day of the German Republic."

Something to remember on this day a whole seventy-one years later.

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P.S. ... and for those of you who can read German (if not, why not?), here's the book "Sepp Herberger und das Wunder von Bern". Also Peter Kasza's "1954 - Fußball spielt Geschichte - das Wunder von Bern".