I guess I got my just deserts

 

 

Thursday wouldn't be Thursday without a drive to Moruya and lunch at the Moruya Bowling Club. The menu was still the same, but the prices had gone up by one dollar. Has the cost-of-living crisis finally come as far as the Far South Coast?

Anyway, I ignored it when I heard that they also offered mulligatawny soup. I absolutely love mulligatawny soup! It used to be on every supermarket shelf until some twenty years ago, when it mysteriously disappeared. And there it was again, for the first time in two decades, as hot and spicy and delicious as ever. What an absolute treat!

 

 

I went back for another treat, a lime cheesecake with ice cream, but I almost screamed when I looked at the cash register display. I told the girl behind it that I knew all about deserts, as I had lived in the Namib Desert and the Saudi Arabian desert, but I had never eaten one before.

 

 

I wasn't sure if she had got the message, but realising that she had given me the smallest of the slices on display, I guess I got my just deserts.

 

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Ninety years old and still going strong!

 

My friend in Cooktown, Hubert Hofer, who is an old acquaintance from my days on Thursday Island, sent me the link to this video. He gets a mention at 54:42

 

When I want to find friends' birthdays, I go to naa.gov.au, click 'RecordSearch' and 'Passenger arrivals', and type in their names to find their airport arrival cards, provided they'd travelled overseas (they all have) and they are old enough to have done so before 1972 (they all are).

I must've forgotten about Ben Cropp, Australia's famous documentary filmmaker, now living in Port Douglas, because a friend in Cooktown just sent me the link to the above YouTube clip in celebration of his 90th birthday. A quick check with naa.gov.au where I found this airport arrival card from 1969, and, yes, Ben had turned 90 on the 19th of January!

 

 

I have all the DVDs of his underwater exploits, but you may not. Luckily, Ben has very generously shared many of them on YouTube, and you can watch them here. Wish him "Happy Birthday, Ben!" in the Comments.

 

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The trap of needing a purpose

 

 

When someone seeks," said Siddhartha, "then it easily happens that his eyes see only the thing that he seeks, and he is able to find nothing, to take in nothing because he always thinks only about the thing he is seeking, because he has one goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: having a goal. But finding means: being free, being open, having no goal."

The main protagonist of Hermann Hesse’s novel "Siddhartha", the wise man, shared these thoughts with a friend. They may sound more like a feeble excuse of a weak-willed loser rather than a pearl of wisdom.

However, it may be worth to pause and think about it. Why? Because we need to keep our mind as free and open as we possibly can. Otherwise, how will we be able to notice when something wonderfully precious enters our life and offers us an opportunity to learn from it?

I only came to Herman Hesse's "Siddhartha" in my retirement. I wish I had read it much earlier and learned from it. Still, it's not too late.

 

Read the book online at www.archive.org

 

While I am fixated on the written word and prefer to read Hermann Hesse's book, you may prefer to watch the Indo-American movie.

 

Or click here

 

Keep an open mind. You might learn something wonderfully precious.

 

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The happy man

 

Read along here

 

It is a dangerous thing to order the lives of others and I have often wondered at the self-confidence of politicians, reformers and suchlike who are prepared to force upon their fellows measures that must alter their manners, habits, and points of view. I have always hesitated to give advice, for how can one advise another how to act unless one knows that other as well as one knows oneself? Heaven knows, I know little enough of myself."

"The Happy Man" is a short story about giving advice. The narrator starts off with his general thoughts on giving advice, and then tells us about the time when a complete stranger walked into his house and asked for advice. W. Somerset Maugham never imposes his views on the reader. He puts a question and then leaves it to the reader to answer it.

I agree with Maugham that "life, unfortunately, is something that you can lead but once; mistakes are often irreparable, and who am I that I should tell this one and that how he should lead it? Life is a difficult business and I have found it hard enough to make my own a complete and rounded thing."

"The Happy Man" has a happy ending as seems to have had my own life - although I haven't yet come to the final reckoning - as I sit close by the fireplace, beanie on my head and rug over my knees, and contemplate my own roller-coaster life full of downs as much as exhilarating ups.

 

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"Say, Tom, let me whitewash a little."

 

"The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" by Mark Twain

 

Tom considered, was about to consent; but he altered his mind: 'No - no - I reckon it wouldn't hardly do, Ben. You see, Aunt Polly's awful particular about this fence - right here on the street, you know - but if it was the back fence I wouldn't mind and she wouldn't. Yes, she's awful particular about this fence; it's got to be done very careful; I reckon there ain't one boy in a thousand, maybe two thousand, that can do it the way it's got to be done.'"

And if you haven't figured out by now the source of this quote, yours must've been a misspent youth. It is, of course, that moment when Tom Sawyer discovers a great law of human action, without knowing it - namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain (which the female of the species knows instinctively as every married man can attest to).

And what a great business model it turned out to be in the age of the internet: facebook, wikipedia, ebay, and many, many other websites "allow" us - if done very careful - to "whitewash" their websites while they reap the profits without doing anything. Think about it next time.

 

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