One man's enclave is another man's exclave

 

 

To cut to the chase, an enclave is a bit of a foreign country inside your country, and an exclave is a bit of your country inside a foreign country; it all depends on from whose side you are looking at it, just as I am an immigrant in Australia and an emigrant in Germany (although these days I like to think of myself as an Australian who was born in the wrong country).

Oh, and before I forget: all enclaves are also exclaves, but not all exclaves are enclaves. An exclave that is surrounded by two countries (one on each side) isn't an enclave, as an enclave has to be surrounded by a single country. I just thought you would also want to know that.

 

A: possesses 5 exclaves (A1, A2, A3, A4, and A5): it is impossible to go from the main part of A to any of these parts going only through territory of A; however: A1 and A2 are not enclaves: neither of them is surrounded by a single "foreign" territory; A1 is a semi-enclave and a semi-exclave: it has an unsurrounded sea border; A2 is an exclave of A: it is separated from A; A3 is an enclave: it is completely surrounded by B; A4 and A5 are counter-enclaves (also known as second-order enclaves): territories belonging to A that are encroached inside the enclave E; contains 1 enclave (E): "foreign" territory totally surrounded by territory of A; contains 1 counter-counter-enclave, or third-order enclave (E1).

B: contains 2 enclaves (A3 and D).

C: continuous territory, contains no enclave or exclave

D: is an enclaved territory: it is territorially continuous, but its territory is totally surrounded by a single "foreign" territory (B).

E: is an enclaved territory: it is inside A; contains 2 enclaves (A4 and A5), which are counter-enclaves of A; possesses 1 counter-enclave (E1), which is a counter-counter-enclave as viewed by A and contained within A5.

 

"What brought all this on?" and "How will that put food on my table?" I hear you ask. It won't, but it'll make your hair stand up - if you have any left to speak of - should you follow the examples in the above diapgram.

The whole thing reared its ugly head when a German friend from my hometown in Braunschweig emailed me the above video clip of an exclave my (c)old hometown used to have near the city of Bremen. The whole thing dates back to the time when Germany was still a wet dream in someone's mind and the place was just an assortment of twenty-six territories, most ruled by royal families, and included four kingdoms, six grand duchies, five duchies (six before 1876), seven principalities, three free Hanseatic cities, and one imperial territory. This particular leftover from that patchwork of territories was not ironed out until 1972 [click].

 

 

Since you have been a long-time reader of this blog, by sheer osmosis you ought to be fluent in German by now, but if you're not, you can skip the first YouTube video and click on the one immediately above which explains an even crazier situation which to this day exists in Belgium and the Netherlands, with borders zigzagging through streets, houses, and even bedrooms, which makes knowing which side of the bed you were conceived on almost as important as knowing who your father was.

Sitting here on the verandah, screened from the lane by almost an acre of "front garden" and my back protected by another six acres, and the whole lot surrounded by the Clyde River, I like to think of "Riverbend" as counter-enclave A5 with E being the mighty river and E1 being my pond.

 

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I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship!

 

 

Is there anything better than a peaceful morning on the sunlit verandah with a cup of coffee, a jam toast, and ABC Radio National to listen to? I don't think so, and I reflect on how lucky I am to live this life, and what a beautiful week it has been.

I've passed my medical for another twelve months of happy motoring, been for my twice-weekly splash in the warm-water pool, have had a memorable barramundi luncheon, and discovered some more interesting books at the Salvos, and while there, I struck up a very interesting conversation with someone who was from out of town and about the same age - well, maybe not quite my age; no-one is quite as old as I am!

 

 

Have you ever experienced that moment when one person says to another, "What! You too? I thought I was the only one.” Ours was such a moment and we talked and talked. He called me a discerning man, several times in fact, but I think he just liked the word. We exchanged email addresses, but I forgot to ask him if he remembered that final scene in "Casablanca" - although I'm sure that if I had asked he would have remembered; after all, he also seemed like a discerning man.

 

 

I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship!

 

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Happiness is a red plastic chair

 

Camp 6 Loloho, Bougainville Island
Click on image to go to the Bougainville Copper Project website

 

Happiness was a red plastic chair when my "home" was a 9x9-ft donga tastefully decorated with PLAYBOY centrefolds of girls waxed to the point of martyrdom, when all my wordly possessions easily fitted into a 2ft-wide metal locker, and when my needs for comfort were satisfied by a red plastic chair on the porch.

 

... because, Roy, an electrical engineer, forgot to plug it in!
Photo courtesy of Roy Goldsworthy, now residing in Malaysia

 

It was on Bougainville Island where it all began, the dreaming of a bigger and better future and the searching for wider and farther horizons. More than fifty years later, I put this old bleached-out red plastic chair on my jetty (under the OSASCOMP-rules, is "bleached-out" a colour-adjective or an opinion? Please put me out of my misery!)

Colour or opinion (or coloured opinion), I sit on it often and dream of the past, with my horizon no farther away than across the river.

 

 

These days, happiness is a bleached-out red plastic chair on my jetty!

 

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P.S. A certain expat, originally from Sunshine Vic. but now residing in Trump's America (and officially designated on the internet as a Republican voter), emailed this photo, hastily scanned, of himself and three fellow-donga dwellers (presumably not all in the same donga) at Camp 6 in Loloho, suggesting that happiness is FOUR red plastic chairs.

 

Flucht in die Wüste

 

 

Technische Inkompetenz und Furcht gegen Urheberrechte zu verstossen erlaubten es mir nicht die Originallänge von 51 Minuten aufzuladen. Es handelt sich hierbei um ein bisher nicht veröffentlichtes Filmprojekt von 1998 der Dokumentarfilmerin Silvia Schippers die inzwischen verstorben ist.

(Ihre damalige Anschrift war Alemannenstr. 6, D-78259 Mühlhausen-Ehingen, Germany. Ob und wo der Film heute noch erhältlich ist weiss ich nicht.)

Der Dokumentarfilm beschreibt die Geschichte zwei junger Männer, Henno Martin und Hermann Korn, frischgebackene Doktoren der Geologie, die im September 1935 an der Küste Südwest-Afrikas ankommen.

Sie haben Nazideutschland verlassen, beginnen geologische Forschungen im Naukluftgebirge und erkunden Wassenvorkommen für die Farmer. Der Zweite Weltkrieg holt sie ein. Aus Furcht vor der drohenden Internierung als 'feindliche Ausländer' fliehen sie in die Wüste, und kämpfen dort mehr als zwei Jahre um das nackte physische Überleben.

Hunger und Durst quälen sie. Ihre wechselnden Unterkünfte, provisorisch, primitiv, bilden den Ausgangspunkt für wechselndes Jagdglück auf der Suche nach Nahrung und Wasser. Sie leben fast wie Menschen der Urzeit, bewundern die karge Schönheit der Wüste, deren extreme Spannung von Tod und Leben sie zu neuen Einsichten über das Werden und Vergehen von Natur und Menschheit führt.

 

 

Das Buch, "Wenn es Krieg gibt, gehen wir in die Wüste", kann man auf der Internet beim www.archive.org kostenlos lesen - siehe here. Um die englische Übersetzung zu lesen, siehe here.

 

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P.S. "The Sheltering Desert" is also available on YouTube - click here.

 

Cargo cult

 

 

Some economists have called communism "the largest cargo cult the world has ever seen", but we needn't look as far back as the former Soviet Union to see cargo cult in practice.

The term 'cargo cult' was first used by Australians in the then Protectorate of Papua & New Guinea after patrols into the central highlands of New Guinea had been resupplied by air drops.

The natives, having observed this, built rough air strips, imitation radio antennas made of rope and bamboo, indeed whole dummy planes, to attract their own cargo from the sky after which all the harsh demands of life would miraculously disappear.

Don't judge them too harshly. We have our own 'cargo cult' in Australia. We call it Centrelink.

 

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Time for a Tiger

 

 

Did I really write in a past post that I had picked up a beautiful hardcover - which on the inside still carried the MPH-sticker of what used to be Malaysia's best-known bookshop - of Anthony Burgess' little-known "Beds in the East", so little-known that I had never heard of it?

Only a few pages into the slim only-200-page-thick book I knew where I had read it all before, as it was the final part of his "Malayan Trilogy". The three books – "Time for a Tiger", "The Enemy in the Blanket" and "Beds in the East" – form, in Burgess' words, a kind of triptych view on the fading sunset of British imperialism in Asia. Its central character is one Victor Crabbe, who, like Burgess, works as an education officer in Malaya and finds himself entangled in the machinations of the country’s struggle for independence. And while Crabbe remains the constant protagonist across the three novels, his story is buttressed by a richly drawn cast of supporting characters reflecting the multicultural makeup of Malaya at the time – a country populated by Chinese, Indians, Arab Muslims, expat Brits and, of course, the native Malayans themselves.

 

 

By the time I had got a few pages into the book, I was completely committed to this hilarious exploration of the expat experience and transported back to my own time in Pulau Pinang in the laste 1970s. Then, all too soon, it was time for a Chicken Chow Mein lunch and a Tiger, but being no longer in Malaysia, a Hahn Premium Light had to do.

 

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Two litres of Greek sunshine on a cold winter's day

 

 

I just heard on the news that an unscrupulous Russian man lured a confused septuagenarian to Alaska in an apparent elder scam. According to the news, the Russian has posed as a friend of his geriatric mark in order to take advantage of him in the remote, icy setting. "This poor, addled codger isn't playing with a full deck and hasn’t for some time", the news went on to say. "We're afraid that the Russian will trick him into signing something away."

Fortunately, at my age I can afford to ignore the news and just sit on the jetty and enjoy the sunshine on a cold winter's day --- two litres of Greek sunshine, to be exact, known by the name of Retsina Malamatina.

Retsina, a Greek white resinated wine, which has been made for at least 2,000 years, is very much an acquired taste because of its unique flavour which originated from the practice of sealing wine vessels, particularly amphorae, with Aleppo Pine resin in ancient times.

I acquired my taste for it during my Geek salad days all those many years ago when I was still able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. I pour myself a glass of it every time I think back to those glorious days in Greece and elsewhere, and to remind myself of how grateful I ought to be for all the good things that have happened to me in my life.

It's still winter here in Australia - the coldest I've ever experienced at "Riverbend" - and the wind has picked up again. Time to go back inside and double down on my reminiscences by watching "Never on Sunday".

 

 

Στην υγειά σου! (Stin iyá su) “To your health!”

 

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Mein Leben im Lied

 

Hannes Wader, "Heute hier morgen dort"

 

Heute hier, morgen dort, bin kaum da, muss ich fort Hab mich niemals deswegen beklagt Hab es selbst so gewählt, nie die Jahre gezählt Nie nach Gestern und Morgen gefragt Manchmal träume ich schwer und dann denk ich es wär Zeit zu bleiben und nun was ganz andres zu tun So vergeht Jahr um Jahr und es ist mir längst klar Dass nichts bleibt, dass nichts bleibt, wie es war Dass man mich kaum vermisst, schon nach Tagen vergisst Wenn ich längst wieder anderswo bin Stört und kümmert mich nicht, vielleicht bleibt mein Gesicht Doch dem Ein' oder Andern im Sinn Manchmal träume ich schwer, und dann denk ich es wär Zeit zu bleiben und nun was ganz andres zu tun So vergeht Jahr um Jahr und es ist mir längst klar Dass nichts bleibt, dass nichts bleibt, wie es war Fragt mich einer, warum ich so bin, bleib ich stumm Denn die Antwort darauf fällt mir schwer Denn was neu ist, wird alt, und was gestern noch galt Stimmt schon heut oder morgen nicht mehr Manchmal träume ich schwer und dann denk ich es wär Zeit zu bleiben und nun was ganz andres zu tun So vergeht Jahr um Jahr und es ist mir längst klar Dass nichts bleibt, dass nichts bleibt, wie es war

 

 

Fatherland

 

 

Fatherland, by Robert Harris, a 1992 novel of alternate history conceived as: "What might have happened if the Nazis won World War II?" Set in 1964 Berlin, all the novel's characters are sharply drawn and passionately motivated in decidedly political directions.

The author has done his research and knows the Nazi world inside out, sticking with a number of actual high-ranking Nazis such as Reinhard Heydrich and Wilhelm Stuckart imaginatively projected into his fictional Germany. Other Nazis in the novel are consistent with those who followed their Führer back in the day. The novelist's language is as crisp as a Nazi goosestep, making for one fast-paced page-turner.

 

Read the book online here

 

Hitler still in power in the 1960s. Once this book has been read, it cannot be un-read - or un-heard, if you listen to the BBC radio play:

 

 

 

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Another perfect day

 

 

After a morning's swim in the warm-water pool and an early arrival for lunch at the Soldiers' Club overlooking the Bay - where I had one of the best-cooked barramundis ever! - we visited our many friends at Vinnies and the Salvos, before spending the rest of the afternoon at the public library (where we ran into some more friends). There's something about being in a library that appeals to all my senses, and I could easily spend the whole day there.

 

 

Needless to say, we booked two tickets for the next book talk by Markus Zusak, he who wrote "The Book Thief", which was also made into a movie. How he could be talked into giving a book talk in provincial Batemans Bay will remain a mystery to me, but then again, he was born in Sydney and may have had memories of happy holidays down here.

Did I pick up any books at Vinnies? Is the Pope a Catholic? I picked up a beautiful hardcover of Anthony Burgess' little-known "Beds in the East" - so little-known that I had never heard of it! - and "Mr. China - An adventurous young man collides with a vast nation on the brink of capitalism" - my thirst for knowledge of all things China is unquenchable - and lastly a 6-CD audiobook of "The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith".

 

 

On the way out, I grabbed the DVD "The Worst Jobs in History" with Tony Robinson who travels to find the worst jobs in Britain. Just as well that not everyone wanted to be an accountant or I would never have got the lucky breaks I did. And the lucky breaks continued with this perfect day!

 

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"Irgendwo über den Bergen muss meine ferne Heimat sein" - Hermann Hesse

 

Hamburg, 2. January bis 29. Februar 1968

 

Nach meinen zwei Jahren als unterstützter Einwanderer in Australien war ich Weihnachten 1967 wieder in der (k)alten Heimat. Es sollte aber nicht für lange sein denn ich hoffte daß die Deutsch-Südamerikanische Bank mich nach Südamerika versetzen würde. Zuerst mußte ich aber durch den deutschen Winter kommen und meinen neuen Vorgesetzten beweisen daß ich meine gute deutsche Unterordnungsbereitschaft im freien Australien nicht vergessen hatte.

Während meiner kurzen Mittagspause die ich im kalten und grauen Draußen verbringen wollte, kam ich mit meiner Brotstulle in der Hand die Marmorstufen der Bank herunter. Zwei Direktoren der Bank kamen die Treppen herauf und hielten mich an und wollten wissen ob ich ein Angestellter der Bank wäre. Ja, dass war ich! Na, dann sollte ich nur die kleine Seitentreppe benutzen. Falsche Treppe, falsches Land!

 

Braunschweig, 1. März bis 30. April 1968

 

Geld für eine sofortige Rückreise nach Australien hatte ich nicht; also zurück zu meiner alten Heimatstadt Braunschweig wo ich zuerst bei meinem Vater unterschlüpfte und eine Anstellung bei der Braunschweig-ischen Staatsbank in deren Auslandsabteilung annahm. Und so hätte es sein können: wieder zuhause und sogar als versierter Bankkaufmann.

Aber auch als Nichtraucher war der Duft der großen weiten Welt in meiner Nase und ich wollte mir schnell das Geld für die Rückreise nach Australien verdienen. Die Braunschweigische Staatsbank zahlte DM650,-- pro Monat, die First National City Bank in Frankfurt zahlte über DM1.000,-- pro Monat.

 

Frankfurt, 1. Mai bis 30. September 1968

 

Also ging ich nach Frankfurt wo ich für fünf Äpplewoi-feuchte Monate im fröhlichen Sachsenhausen wohnte. Als Mitte September meine nette Wirtin anfing den Ofen in meinem gemieteten Zimmer anzuheizen wurde mir klar daß ich einen zweiten deutschen Winter nicht überleben würde. Geld für die Rückreise nach Australien hatte ich immer noch nicht da ich zuviel Äpplewois und Handkäs mit Musik genossen hatte, aber eine Firma in Afrika war bereit mich dort kostenlos hinzufliegen um eine Anstellung in Lüderitz anzunehmen. Tschüß, Deutschland! Hoe gaan dit, Suidwes-Afrika?

 

Südwest-Afrika, 30. September 1968 bis 31. März 1969

 

"Irgendwo über den Meeren muss meine ferne Heimat sein". Und so kam ich dann im April 1969 wieder in meiner Heimat Australien an!

 

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No Nuremburg Rally for me!

 

Triumph of the Will (German: Triumph des Willens) is a 1935 German Nazi propaganda film directed, produced, edited and co-written by Leni Riefenstahl. Adolf Hitler commissioned the film and served as an unofficial executive producer; his name appears in the opening titles. It chronicles the 1934 Nazi Party Congress (rally) in Nuremberg, which was attended by more than 700,000 Nazi supporters. The film contains excerpts of speeches given by Nazi leaders at the Congress, including Hitler, Rudolf Hess and Julius Streicher, interspersed with footage of massed Sturmabteilung (SA) and Schutzstaffel (SS) troops and public reaction. Its overriding theme is the return of Germany as a great power with Hitler as its leader. The film was produced after the Night of the Long Knives, and many formerly prominent SA members are absent. Following its release in March 1935, it became a major example of film used as propaganda and was well-received at home. Riefenstahl's techniques—such as moving cameras, aerial photography, the use of long-focus lenses to create a distorted perspective, and the revolutionary approach to the use of music and cinematography—have earned Triumph of the Will recognition as one of the greatest propaganda films in history. It won several awards in Germany, France and Italy. In present-day Germany, the film is not censored but the courts commonly classify it as Nazi propaganda, which requires an educational context for public screenings. The film continues to influence films, documentaries and commercials to this day.

 

No Nuremburg Rally for me for a while, as after Monday's COVID booster shot my right arm feels a bit immoblised, but my vacuous head should help to keep me above water when we go to the warm-water ool later this morning.

During the week, Thursday is the only morning when the warm-water ool is open for us plebs. On all other mornings a very stout lady - who would've done any rally proud - blasts the pool with very loud heavy metal music to match the titanium hip and knee-replacements of her many geriatric charges, for whom the ool is then exclusively reserved.

 

 

You may have noticed that I kept out the 'p' when writing about the warm-water ool. Please keep it that way, should you decide to join us!

"Die Fahne hoch ..."

 

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For the sake of balance

 

Go to page 67 by clicking here

 

It's been many years since I've put my hands on a Reader's Digest magazine or its books-by-the-yard, aka condensed books; however, when reading that my favourite writer, James A. Michener, had been a regular contributors, I retrieved some of his articles.

He begins his contribution "Islam - The Misunderstood Religion", written in 1955, with the words, "One of the strangest facts in today's world is that Islam, a religion which in many ways is almost identical with Christianity and Judaism, should be so poorly understood in America and Europe. Since there are 350 million Muslims in the world, and since they control many strategic areas of the earth, it is essential that we understand them better."

That was written more than sixty years ago. Today, those 350 million Muslims have become an estimated 1.6 billion and the words "ISIS" and "terrorism" make headlines every day. Would the world be a better place if more than a mere handful of those fanatics received the ultimate treatment under Shariah Law? You bet! Do I believe that the unfettered "Islamisation" of Europe is heading for a spectacular disaster? I do!

And yet, having lived in Saudi Arabia, I have nothing but respect for and fond memories of my past employers, the Mofarrij family, for Abdul Hameed, Ali, and my then boss, Abdul Ghani (who's since, sadly, passed away), and I hope that one day we can all live in peace and harmony, not necessarily side by side but in our respective corners of the world, and leave religion where it belongs: inside the mosques and churches.

In the meantime, read Michener's somewhat romanticised article here. It is used by various Islamic websites such as www.islamweb.net and www.shariah.ws to create a more favourable image of Islam than it really deserves, given the present state of affairs.

 

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Save yourself the pain of shopping at Specsavers

 

 

There was a time when you walked into an optometrist with your glasses on, had your eyesight checked, and if you needed updated glasses, had a new pair of lenses popped into the existing frames. I mean, who needs updated frames unless you're an Elton John or Dame Edna Everage?

Not anymore! I was told on more than one occasion that popping new lenses into old frames would cost even more than buying completely new frames - starting at several hundred dollars to the-sky-is-the-limit! - which is optometrist-speak and translates into something like "There's not enough money in it for me to simply change your lenses, so unless you're going to buy completely new frames, don't ever bother me!"

Things seem to have got worse since then, because the other day I popped into Specsavers in Batemans Bay where I had bought a pair of reading glasses only a couple of years earlier, and one of the lenses had ever so slightly popped out of the frame - not by much and it wasn't loose but it just needed a tiny notch to get it safely back into place.

The place was swarming with "assistants" in their fashionable airhostess-like Specsavers uniforms looking down at their folded hands or up at the ceiling because I was the only customer and there was nothing else for them to do - surely, this must be another one of those government-subsidised employment schemes where the subsidy exceeds the wages costs - and yet I had to wait for a while before one of them approached me to ask how she could help and to whom I explained my problem.

She took my glasses and disappeared behind a screen - whether to check my glasses or her sales manual, I don't know - only to reappear minutes later to give me a "No, sorry!" but that she could sell me completely new frames, presumably into which she would pop those same lenses she couldn't re-pop into my old glasses. Where had I heard that before?

 

 

Only looking back on my way out did I realise what their real business was. I wonder if I can bring my own tissues or have to buy theirs!

 

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Ich denke oft an Piroschka

 

 

Weg von Braunschweig in 1963 und weg von Deutschland in 1965 und der letzte Besuch war in 1984. Kein Wunder daß ich manchmal ein bisschen 'Heimweh' habe (oder ist es 'Fernweh'?) Um es zu bewältigen schaue ich mir ab und zu einen alten deutschen Film an - "Ich denke oft an Piroschka" - und ich schickte ihn auch an meine erste (und einzige) deutsche Freundin von den frühen 60er Jahren. Sie schrieb prompt zurück:

"Hallo Peter, natürlich kenne ich den Film und habe ihn mir auch schon ganz oft angesehen!! Meistens kullern bei diesem Film auch Tränchen. Piroschka ist so verliebt in Andi und er merkt es anfänglich gar nicht. So verträumt und romantisch war ich auch, als wir uns kennenlernten, aber Du hattest Fernweh. Die Beiden hatten auch einmal im Leben die Möglichkeit sich lieben zu können. Uns war es vergönnt, die Zeit war zu kurz !! Ich denke oft an unser letztes Treffen und werde Dich auch nie vergessen. Der Andi hat seine Piri auch nie vergessen. Fühl Dich von mir innig umarmt."

Das ist nun schon fast zwanzig Jahre her. Inzwischen ist sie auch schon gestorben und dann weiß man plötzlich wie alt man selbst geworden ist, aber die wirklich schönen Erinnerungen werden immer lebendig bleiben.

 

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