My best friend, twenty years after he had come back to Australia, still wore the same shirt and shorts he had worn in New Guinea. Wearing things out until they could be worn no more was what we both did. As the older one, he had been shaped by the Great Depression, and I, the younger one, by the desperate post-war years in Germany, but let me get back on board the train of thought before it leaves the station without me.
We recently bought a new refrigerator which, given its amazing energy ratings compared to what the thirty-year-old one used to consume, will have recovered its low MADE IN CHINA sticker price in less than two years. And that's not even considering its many improvements, such as its self-defrosting freezer compartment, unlike the one packed solid with frozen ice we and another friend in New Guinea used to have.
That other friend, a very careful spender, had just one hobby and that was photography. Those were the days before automatic cameras when you set the time exposure speed and aperture using your trial-and-error experience or you used one of those newfangled photographic lightmeters which my friend had discovered in a photographic shop.
In those days when credit cards were not as ubiquitous as they are now, every shop in the then Territory of Papua New Guinea accepted cheques because everyone knew everyone, but my friend had neither a credit card nor a cheque book because, as I mentioned before, when it came to spending money, he adhered to the part of the Lord's Prayer where it says, "Lead us not into temptation". So where did he keep his money?
I found out as soon as we had got back to his flat and he opened his refrigerator's freezer compartment which was, of course, frozen solid. It took several hours of hammer-and-chiselling to transfer all that solid ice from the freezer to the kitchen sink where it was left to thaw before he could extract from all that melting mess a plastic-wrapped roll which contained - yes, you're well ahead of me! - a sizeable wad of money!
Did we drive back into town to buy that lightmeter? We didn't! By the time he could peel off a few moist banknotes, he had listened to the Lord's Prayer again, rolled up the money and put it back in the freezer.
We were all supplied with furnished housing (plus free utilities and domestic staff) and fully serviced and fuelled company cars, so that we could be both generous and stingy in equal measure without appearing to be either. We would generously share our free amenities with any guest arriving on our doorsteps, and what we still had to pay out of our own pockets was so little that there was no need for any stinginess.
In this manner, my friend, who was a stayer in one place rather than a drifter like me, visited me in my many other contract locations: in Lae in New Guinea, on Thursday Island in the Torres Strait, Honiara in the Solomons, Apia in Samoa, Penang in Malaysia, and Piraeus in Greece.
He never brought anything other than himself which was fine as he was good company and always welcome to share the free amenities my employers supplied me with, but I began to question his true motives when, never having been to Singapore before, he arrived in Penang after having slept at Changi Airport and without his beloved BRONICA camera because "I no longer take photos. It's become too expensive!"
After a few years, having kept in touch by letter, he wrote to say that he was just then in between jobs and could I use another accountant in my office in Greece? Yes, I could, and I offered him three months' employment on a tax-free salary paid in Australian dollars and free hotel accommodation plus air fares and, to keep things simple, I asked him to buy his own ticket which I would reimburse him on arrival in local drachmas to give him some spending money for the three months.
He had to borrow the money for the airfare from his stepfather as all his own money was not frozen solid this time but earning high interest on term deposits. When he arrived in Piraeus, I immediately reimbursed him the airfare and then we got down to some work in my office. Everything went well - he was a good and steady worker albeit within any ambitions - and soon the three months had ended and I gave him a few days off to prepare for his departure. In those days, Greece had restrictions on how much money could be taken out of the country and I was not surprised when the bank phoned to confirm that my friend had been employed by us and was allowed to convert drachmas into dollars. What did surprise me was the amount of money he wanted to convert: it was almost all of the money I had reimbursed him for his airfare. He had spent three months in Greece almost without spending a drachma!
After his last uninvited visit to my home in Canberra in 1992 - or was it 1993? - we lost contact and our twenty-five-year-long friendship had seemingly come to an end. During all this time we had never discussed financial matters other than those pertaining to our work, but you can't be a good friend with someone for all that time without having at least some inkling of his financial position, and my inkling of his financial position was what's described in the vernacular as being "filthy rich!"
Which made it all the sadder when I found on the internet this death notice. He had died just two years past his retirement age - although I doubt he had actually retired - without ever enjoying all that money!
If this post made you think because you may find yourself in a similarly 'unfortunate' situation, please contact me and I shall happily furnish you with a bank account number to which to remit your unwanted money.
