A hint: beware of the boy with the whistle and the order of operations
Just read about Dojo Bali and am torn between envy at the possibilities open to young people today and pity when I watch some of the local school leavers start their working lives delivering pizzas or collecting empty shopping trolleys.
But I also shake my head when I watch them go off on a holiday to Bali before they're even old enough to get a driver's licence, or borrow money to buy an expensive car as soon as they get one.
By contrast, my generation did it tough. Personally, I never achieved even a modicum of financial security or personal comfort until I was well into my thirties, and my only knowledge of Bali then was that it was west of the imaginary Wallace Line.
Of course, we were all in the same leaky boat together because the biggest transfer of wealth from one generation to the next, caused by successive real estate and share market booms, hadn't happened yet.
Today's youngsters may be hedonistic but they're not stupid: they know that however many pizzas they deliver or shopping trolleys they collect, they could never accumulate the kind of wealth their parents will leave them. Let's hope they use it wisely; after all, what's the point of breed-ing children if each generation does not improve on what went before?
Mind you, we probably were a puzzle to our parents who thought that Elvis Presley's unashamed hip-swivelling was going to spell the end of the world. Perhaps the only thing our generation will be remembered for is that we were the last to have known a world without the internet.
It's been a puzzling morning. Time to solve the one above. Send your answer to riverbendnelligen[AT]mail.com. First one to send in the correct answer wins a one-week stay at "Riverbend Cottage". The runner-up gets a week with the neighbours.
