Thanks for leaving your hairdryer behind, Padma!

 

 

Day Four of being monarch of all I survey. Before Padma left, she told me to stay active, so I romped up to the local gym today. Confused by all those bouncy girls on different exercise machines, I asked the trainer, "I want to impress those girls. Which machine should I use?" "Try the ATM outside," he said. What an attitude!

Being already in town and knowing I was running low on milk and bread, I quickly dropped into ALDI - for the first time in years as Padma usually does all the shopping. My own shopping is limited to the local op-shop which is normally a quiet place where I love to lose myself among the bookshelves to search for hidden gems but not this morning when some dark-complexioned customer, quite surprisingly versed in German metaphysics, was yelling out to no-one in particular, "Fucking Kant!"

I was very much tempted to pick him up on his pronunciation but in the end thought better of it, and walked next door to Dan Murphy's to stock up while Padma isn't looking. As I loaded the month's supply of booze into the boot, I discovered the pool bag with her hairdryer still in it.

Still too early to return to the peace and quiet of "Riverbend", I thought I'd have some fun. Thanks for leaving your hairdryer behind, Padma!

 

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Exodus

 

Trailer

 

Having grown up in post-war Germany where we were all saddled with the collective guilt of what had been done to the Jews during World War II, Leon Uris's 1960 novel "Exodus" was required reading - in German, of course - before we could even find Palestine on a map.

 

Read the book online at www.archive.org

 

It was only many years later that I also watched the movie, in Australia and in English, which, although fictionalised, drew its inspiration from the real life-events surrounding the "Exodus 1947". While I was deeply impressed by the movie, I felt ambivalent about rebuilding a nation in a land from which it had been dispersed more than 2,000 years before. Of course, one could always argue that establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine was a much better idea than the so-called "Uganda Scheme".

In the light of what is happening right now in the Middle East, it's perhaps a book and movie well worth re-reading and re-watching.

 

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Was I supposed to drink that stuff?

 

 

Looking out the window and seeing the "Rauhreif" on the grass, I'm not surprised they've dropped the term "global warming" in favour of "climate change". Of course, the real agenda of "climate change" was never about saving the planet but all about changing the world. If it had been a scientific issue, it would not have become a political issue (no, I'm not far-right; I'm just right far more often than you are).

It's Day Three as a "Strohwitwer", and before all meals eaten from the same plate with the same spoon, same fork, and same knife all taste the same, I thought it best to give them a quick rinse while at the same time dealing with the outside "climate change" by warming up my hands in the washing-up suds, but then I read the label on the washing-up liquid: Passionfruit & Pepperberry!!! Was I supposed to drink that stuff?

 

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Happiness on a stick!

 

 

Last night I plugged in a USB stick with the audiobook of Bill Bryson's "The Road to Little Dribbling" on it while waiting for my usual nightcap, the ABC's Late Night Live at 10 o'clock. I must've fallen asleep because it's now quarter past seven in the morning, and Bill Bryson is still reading from his 500-page book. Happiness on a stick!

 

Preview

 

One quick look out the window prompted me to turn to HIGH the electric heater, make myself a quick cup of coffee in the icy-cold kitchen, and return to bed for more of Bill Bryson. There's no point in even turning on the radio and perhaps hear Trump threaten to bomb Norway if he isn't awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for dropping a million bombs on Iran. I can almost hear his inflammatory rambling and weaving rhetoric, "Hand over the fucking Peace Prize or be obliterated."

 

It's a socked-in morning at "Riverbend". The river is somewhere in all that morning mist. A big white yacht had moored there yesterday afternoon and was still there when I went to bed. I hope they had a good heater on board because it was a real three-dog night.

 

After her first night of luxury at the Novotel Balikpapan, Padma whatsapped me from Samarinda where she's booked herself into the Vihara Muladharma for three days to attend a Buddhist retreat.

 

 

Her bedroom looks a bit more organised than mine but at least I won't have to listen to all that "Om Mani Padme Hum". Better her than me!

 

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Land below the wind

 

 

When I got this photo of Padma's arrival at HARRIS Tuban for her first night in Bali, she had already boarded next morning's flight to Balikpapan where she was met at the airport by her cousin and her late father's youngest sister. Tomorrow she'll leave for Samarinda where she was born.

 

 

She's complaining about the heat and the humidity there but, having just now come back inside after feeding the wild birds and ducks on the pond, with the white frost on the grass crunching under my feet, I'd swap places with her in a heartbeat. I've always had a soft spot for Borneo, the Land below the Wind - so called because it's below the typhoon region - and its "people of the forest", the orangutans.

 

 

By moving even closer to the electric oil column heater before watching this clip of the amazing rain forest on the world's third-largest island (after Greenland and New Guinea), I might perhaps feel a little warmer.

Mudah2an hutan ini kelestariannya terjaga sampai anak cucu kelak juga bisa menikmati keindahan hutan ini.

 

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