Cogito ergo sum

 

I have called my little cabin "Melbourne", so that, if someone asks for me, Padma won't have to tell a lie when she tells them "He's gone to Melbourne" to make them go away.

 

It's important to have a place to shut out the world and all its demands. A place to collect your thoughts, a place where you can think, relax, be honest with yourself; feel tranquil when needed, and stimulated when not. Somewhere, however small, that gives you a sense of solitude and is a sanctuary for your private thoughts, and where visitors need not be welcomed.

Solitude means being alone without feeling lonely. We all need periods of solitude. Periods of time to think. Thinking really means talking to your self. It involves both the speaker (I) and the listener (me).

Descartes, the 17th-century rationalist and father of modern philosophy, famously said cogito ergo sum, which means I think therefore I am. He believed thinking starts with the eye and came up with his immortal line when he was alone in bed. He must have really liked his own company.

 

To explore this famous thought experiment further, go the to wikipedia page

 

I did a lot of talking to my self last night in my own special place, "Melbourne", far away from the rest of the world. I thought I might spend the rest of the night there, but then there was a knock on the door, and 'she-who-must-be-obeyed' said that dinner was ready.

 

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Lunch with a view

 

At the Batemans Bay Soldiers Club

 

A day in town is never complete with a visit to Vinnies, and so, after a lunch of Chinese food at the Soldiers' Club, I checked through Vinnies' book section for any hidden treasures.

 

 

I found a nice copy of Albert Camus' "The Plague" and an interesting history of George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh, titled "The Same Man".

On the lighter side, I picked up Jonas Jonasson's "The One Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window And Disappeared" - which was also made into a charming movie - click here - and Paul Hogan's "Australia According to Hoges". I wasn't sure about "Philosophy Made Simple" by Robert Hellenga and "This Book Made Me Think Of You" by Libby Page, but at two dollars each, I can't go much wrong, can I?

All I need now is plenty of time to read them all.

 

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Riverside Living in the Heart of the Bay

 

For the full advertisement, click here

 

Sometimes life moves in circles: before I bought "Riverbend" at the end of 1993, I had bought a small riverside unit in the Bay as my pied-à-terre when I came down to the coast from Canberra.

 

An almost forgotten photo of my Unit 4 after I had rescued it from some terrible tenants and tried to rent it out as a furnished holiday-rental, but that was a mug's game too, with the income barely covering the body corporate levies and council rates. I sold it in 2003 for $365,000 at what was then the height of the market. The next owner sold it again in 2008 for $310,000, and it was last sold in 2018 for $430,000. Barely a raving financial success.

 

Then, after a sudden rush of blood to the head, I found myself to be the owner of "Riverbend", and I no longer needed the little riverside unit. I kept it as a rental but that was a mug's game, which I gave away in 2003 by selling it for $365,000. Even though the capital gains had barely kept up with inflation, I was presented with a tax bill of $55,640. Not much of an investment, but, of course, it had always been a lifestyle choice.

 

My previously owned Unit 4 is two doors to the right of the BLACKSHAW pointer

 

That was Unit 4 at 33 Clyde Street - click here - so when Unit 2 recently came up for sale, I was interested to have a look. Its current owners had bought it in 2021 for $531,000, and it is now for sale at between $650,000 - $665,000 (Why do agents advertise a price RANGE; do they really expect someone to pay more than the advertised bottom price?)

When I inspected it today, I was impressed with the improvements to both the inside of the unit and the maintenance of the whole 15-unit complex, and said that I would be interested in buying it for $600,000.

Something may come of it, or nothing may come of it. If I can buy it for $600,000, I'm back to where I started in 1992 when I bought the same unit two doors down as my coastal pied-à-terre. I'll keep you posted.

In the meantime, if you're interested in some riverside living in the heart of the Bay, you should contact Jessica Fisher at BLACKSHAW.

 

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P.S. It's early Monday morning, just after 9 o'clock, and BLACKSHAW phoned: no, the owners won't accept $600,000! I'm sort of relieved as I always tend to get a bit carried away on the day (and I won't even tell you about my wedding day!) Anyway, I'm not quite ready yet to swap 10,000 of my BHP shares for yet another excursion into real estate. The Labor government's recent changes to negative gearing and the capital gains tax have put a cloud over real estate as a form of investment, and the owners of Unit 2 may still rue the day when they rejected my offer.

 

The Book Whisperer

 

To watch the whole movie, click here
(There's something weird about 'wierd'; 'I before E, except after C' doesn't always work)

 

Remember that scene in "They're a Weird Mob", in which Nino for his first job as a builder's labourer wears his Sunday best? It's not in the book, but in the movie Pat's last words to his departing boss are, "Why didn't you bring me Prince Philip?"

 

To read the book, click here

 

I was reminded of this scene when I walked into my favourite op-shop, Vinnies in Moruya, and met Paul, the book whisperer, who tends to the second-hand book section. "Why don't you wear a tie?" I wanted to ask.

 

 

As he told me, he's a retired high-school teacher in maths and history, and never lost his habit of being dressed like a high-school teacher. I, too, seemed to have been born with a collar and tie on, and for most of my working life I have worn both, and, if the climate allowed it, also a proper suit. It left me with a wardrobe full of business suits and dinner suits and even a tuxedo, and I have often wondered if I should wear them out while I'm driving my ride-on mower up and down "Riverbend". It'd finally give the neighbours something they could really talk about!

 

When I grew up in Germany, brown shoes with blue suit were definitely démodé

 

A German reader, getting well ahead of me, tried to image what I would look like sitting on my ride-on, dressed up to the nines, and so created this image — with the help of "KI", he told me. The same people who gave us Goethe and Schiller, Nietzsche and Kant (I didn't mean to swear!) and such beautiful words as "Schadenfreude", "Lebensschmerz", "Sehnsucht", "Blitzkrieg", "Wiener Schnitzel", and "Heimweh", replaced scores of them with English ones (and then, even more strangely, gave them German der, die, das articles, German plural endings, and even conjugated them - if they're verbs - and declined them - if they're a nouns or adjectives - as if they were German words. And yet, they insist on using the initialism "KI" (künstliche Intelligenz) instead of the proper English one, which is "AI". (And if you think that this was a rather convoluted explanation, that's still the German in me trying to get out.)

 

To read the book, click here
(Yes, I could've read it online, but I bought it for its beautiful slipcover)

 

The things Paul and I talked about were books and movies. Of course, as an ex-teacher, he had seen the movie "Wake in Fright", based on the novel by Kenneth Cook, after which we briefly touched on "Lord Jim" by Joseph Conrad, "The Shiralee", and "Doctor Zhivago" with Omar Sharif — whom Paul resembled, or so Padma insisted. I left with a beautifully produced slipcover copy of Okakura Kakuzo's "The Book of Tea", which is all about tea and Taoism and Zen, and Hermann Koch's "The Dinner", after which we had our usual lunch at the Moruya Bowling Club.

 

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H&R "Blocked"

 

 

I like to keep the taxman at arm's length, not because I have anything to hide but simply because I hate the aggravation he causes me with his silly questions, as he did several times in the late 1970s when I was still working overseas and he kept asking me what my "gross income from all world sources" was.

There had always been the ‘183-day’ test, which I easily passed every time, but the taxman kept asking away, as he had first done in 1978, when he asked me, "1. Were you born in Australia?" and "7. State your reasons why you consider yourself to be a resident or non-resident of Australia", and, of course, "14. Details of all income earned by you from sources within and outside Australia in the year ended 30 June 1978".

 

 

All this was done in those pre-computer days by typewriter, and so I would pull out my portable OLYMPIA typewriter, which I had bought many years earlier in New Guinea, and type, "Please explain your definition of 'resident' and 'non-resident' which presumably is quite different for tax purposes from the casual sense of the word" (which was long before "Please explain!" had become an iconic catchphrase).

Deafening silence for another year, until, like a dog with a bone, he trotted out the same questions the next year, and all the other years while I lived and worked in Papua New Guinea, the Solomons, Burma, Indonesia, Samoa, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Greece, on and on and on. Perhaps he thought I lived inside that PO Box 42 in Duffy in the A.C.T.

 

 

I've been back in Australia for decades now, but my distaste for the taxman is as strong as ever. To keep keeping him at arm's length, I still prepare my own tax return, but then let H&R Block lodge it for me.

Better them than me to "Block" the taxman's silly questions. This has been my first year with H&R Block, and I can highly recommend them.

 

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