How to get more out of your 650,000 hours

 

 

Even a long human life adds up to only about 650,000 hours. And when that modest milestone flashes past, or at some other point thereabouts, for reasons unknown your atoms will shut you down, silently disassemble, and go off to be other things. And that's it for you."

Ever since I read this in the "Introduction" to Bill Bryson's book "A Short History of Nearly Everything", I have been determined to squeeze as much out of and into those 650,000 hours even though (as I quickly calculated without touching my electronic calculator; I still remember and use almost daily those "Rechenvorteile" drilled into me by my primary school mathematics teacher more than sixty-five years ago) I have already outlived those 650,000 hours by well over five years.

Anyway, that's my excuse for all those sleepless nights which I spent listening to the radio or audiobooks, the latest of which has been "A Short History of Nearly Everything", and of which I was going to write this morning's post. That was before I found, quite accidentally while searching YouTube, this audiobook of "A Little History of the World" by Ernst Gombrich, which chronicles human development from the inventions of cavemen to the results of the First World War.

 

Read the book online here

 

Its original title in German, "Eine kurze Weltgeschichte für junge Leser", sums up well Gombrich's goal, "I would like to emphasize that this book isn't thought of and wasn't ever thought of as a replacement for history books used in schools, which serve an entirely different purpose. I would like for my readers to relax and to follow history without having to take notes of names and dates. I promise too, that I won't ask you for them." It's the most magical definition of history I have ever heard!

I will get back to you with "A Short History of Nearly Everything" at some other time. Today I want you to spend the next nine out of those 650,000 hours on listening to this "once upon a time" audiobook.

 

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Thamer, you'd feel at home in my workshop!

 

 

Until I returned to Australia in 1985, I had never held a hammer in my hand. This continued for several years until I bought "Riverbend" in 1993 when the constant need for repairs and maintenance made me buy my first hammer, and then another one, and then more and more tools, until I had a workshop full of them.

Not that I have used many of them which means that many have slowly rusted away. Today was as good a day as any to take stock of the whole situation and to sort out what's still usable and what is not, and I spent all afternoon inside the workshop to create some order out of chaos.

 

 

This was a one-man's job, and I had to point to my "ABSOLUTELY NO NAGGIN" sign whenever Padma wanted to give me unwanted advice.

 

 

As much as I would've liked to talk, this was not the time for it, as there was already much to reflect on and to remember, as I looked at the old car signage with which I driven around Canberra for over ten years.

 

 

There were the indestructible plastic sandals from my days on Thursday Island which I found in a dark corner. It seems so long ago and so far away as if it had never happened at all. Are you reading this, Hubert?

 

 

And there, sitting on a shelf that wanted to remind me of life's brevity and next to a mouse trap, was a 'chinlone', a Burmese caneball, which I had often played with my staff in Rangoon more than fifty years ago.

 

 

Looking at the clock, I realised it was five o'clock somewhere and perhaps time to hurry things along and bring things to an end.

 

 

Time for one last look at the "I love Jeddah" and "I love Saudia" sign ...

 

 

... before closing up for the day.

 

 

Thamer, I think you'd feel quite at home in my workshop!

 

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Sunday too far away

 

 

In this Australian classic, Jack Thompson is Foley, the best shearer on every station for miles around. "Sunday Too Far Away" is Foley's story of sweat-soaked days and rum-soaked nights, of bloody two-fisted punch ups ... of scab labour brought in during the shearers strike of '56 and of the poor old bastard who runs the place: the cocky (farmer) who is terrified that one slip of the shears will render his prize ram good for nothing but mint sauce.

 

 

The full-length movie is not available on YouTube. Buy it on ebay. It's worth every cent and the “rissole” story put me off rissoles for life!

 

 

Anyway, today being Saturday and Sunday not far away, this may be a good time to watch it again.

 

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When the t-shirt fits, wear it

 

 

I won't give you that smug feeling of having aged better than me by showing you the upper portion of this cropped photo; suffice it to say that neither the description 'I'm so cute' nor the size still fit.

It's going to be another very hot day and a very dismal day on the stock market, with BHP down more than 2%, or more than a dollar, in early trading ( in contrast, RIO is up by almost 2%, or $2.70, on the news that it will no longer pursue a merger with those Swiss gnomes Glencore). I'll never be a trader but only a collector of fully-franked dividends, so I might as well avert my eyes from the sea of red and look out to the river of blue while I sit on the sunlit verandah and listen to the radio.

 

 

Or perhaps I could just read Charles Bukowski's book "Ham on Rye":

 

[Chapter 44] "I could see the road ahead of me. I was poor and I was going to stay poor. But I didn't particularly want money. I didn't know what I wanted. Yes, I did. I wanted someplace to hide out, someplace where one didn't have to do anything. The thought of being something didn't only appall me, it sickened me. The thought of being a lawyer or a councilman or an engineer, anything like that, seemed impossible to me. To get married, to have children, to get trapped in the family structure. To go someplace to work every day and to return. It was impossible. To do things, simple things, to be part of family picnics, Christmas, the 4th of July, Labor, Mother's Day . . . was a man born just to endure those things and then die? I would rather be a dishwasher, return alone to a tiny room and drink myself to sleep."

 

For more Bukowski audiobooks, click here

 

Or I could just close my eyes and listen to the audiobook.

 

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P.S. A friend was caught driving without a seatbelt and was fined $420. I told him, "Why not paint one across your t-shirt just in case you forget again?", and felt pretty good about having had the idea. Then I googled to see if someone had beaten me to it — and there it was: click here.

 

 

"What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun."    Ecclesiastes 1:9

 

Walk, don't run - Part II

 

 

In response to my "Walk, don't run" post, a reader sent me the above clip of a group called "The Ventures" playing a tune called "Walk, don't run". I'd never heard of either but listening to the tune I realised I had heard it many times before, just after I had come to Australia in 1965 and just after I had begun to discover the opposite sex in Australia. Watching the clip all the way to the end, I even came across what looked like me:

 

 

It prompted me to go looking for some old photos from those days which I'm allowed to publish now without running the risk of some back-dated claims for child maintenance. Luckily, back in those days my shy personality and nerdy looks were all the contraceptives I needed.

 

 

For starters, I have no recollection of who those people are or what their names were, although the one in the picture above may have been called Mary - I mean, she had that Mary-Hopkin look, right down to that mole on her right upper chin, don't you think?

 

 

Ditto with this lot but I recall that the party was held at Canberra's Deakin Inn sometime in 1966 by which time my English was already good enough for me to mumble, "Yes, please; I'll have another one!"

 

 

And I've no idea why this girl - whoever she was - singled me out. Maybe she needed someone to lean on. It certainly wasn't the grey flannel suit I'd been wearing since my articled years in Germany.

 

 

Drinks of choice in those days were jugs of beer for the boys and Barossa Pearl for the girls who clutched imitation gold lamé bags while the boys clutched at straws trying to look like Ringo Starr. Those were the days, my friend. We thought they'd never end. We'd sing and dance forever and a day. We'd live the life we choose. We'd fight and never lose. For we were young and sure to have our way.

 

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