PANDORA IV is still here but we've been away

 

We spent a whole day at Ulladulla, visiting our favourite op-shop, lunching at the bowling club, swimming a few laps in the heated indoor pool, and visiting our German friends, Heike and Siegfried.

I also visited the local Government Service Centre to claim a small $36 Medicare refund on my visit to the skin specialist some months ago. I had to stand in line with dozens of professional entitlement-seekers lodging their regular claims for the dole, green- and purple-haired girls with nose rings collecting their single mother's pension, and a colourful mix of equally nouveaux pauvres drawing housing subsidies and an assortment of other Government largesse.

Looking freshly washed and shaved, wearing clean clothes, and being totally devoid of bodily adornments such as tattoos, razor blades and metal studs, I felt like an alien in another universe. If I ever have to lodge another Medicare claim (small as it is given that I'm paying thousands every year in Medicare Levy and private health insurance), I shall do so by mail. It's a lot faster and a lot less smelly!

The visit to the Salvos' op-shop netted me a few more interesting books: Eden in the East - The Drowned Continent of Southeast Asia; a slim volume of Poems by Hermann Hesse; a humourous Mustn't Grumble - An Accidental Return to England; a beautifully bound Off the Beaten Track - A Traveller's Anthology; a small book of Tales from Paradise - Memories of the British in the South Pacific; and a much-read Slow Travel - Sell the house, buy the yacht and sail away ... which will be read even more by me.

And all that on top of the dozen-or-so books I already have on order from Booktopia and The Book Depository!

I think, for the rest of the day I shall engage in some Slow Travel and cross that imaginary barrier which so often keeps us in our ruts.

 

If you get an email telling you that you can catch swine 'flu from tins of ham then delete it. It's spam.

Etch-A-Sketch is dead

 

I've just heard on the news that Andre Cassagnes, the French inventor of the Etch-A-Sketch, has died at the age of 86. Well, you have to admire this bloke. He made millions out of inventing something that didn't work very well and offered about ten minutes of fun before being consigned to the attic.

For the record, I would like it to be known that the cheap post-war German version I was acquainted with in my teenage years was no more than two postcard-sized pieces of cardboard clamped together at the edges which formed a cut-out frame for a coated surface on which to scribble. It was known as "Wunderblock" - how wunderbar! - and is described here.

I also would like it to be known that my anatomical knowledge at that time would never have enabled me to produce drawings like the one above.

Also, we had no attic.

 

The best antique is an old friend.

Bali on a pension

 

To all my retired friends who are trying to make out on an Australian age pension, I simply say, "Outsource your retirement to Bali." A growing colony of retirees are able to call Bali home under a retirement visa available to Australians aged 55 or older who can fully support themselves. The one-year visa, which costs $1000, can be extended every year until five years has elapsed, at which time they can apply for a permanent stay permit. However there are restrictions: visitors on the retirement visa cannot work, must employ an "Indonesian maid servant" and must be able to prove that their living expenses total $US18,000 annually, close to the full Australian pension.

In Australia, if you don't own your own home, the weekly pension of $350 for rent, bills and food is not enough. Probably a lot more people would be in Bali if they realised they'd be much better off. Bali is a great leveller, with expats from unlikely backgrounds connecting in cafes and clubs. Those who would be hard-pressed to pay the weekly grocery bill in Australia can afford to eat out frequently there. And let's face it, you're not doing too badly as a pensioner if you can afford a pembantu, a chauffeur, a swimming pool, and the odd posh restaurant meal.

The trouble with paradise, of course, is that it can never last forever. In recent years many of Bali's problems - water shortages, frequent electricity blackouts, dodgy phone and internet connections, poor sewage facilities, traffic congestion - have increased along with the much bigger inflow of tourists and untrammelled development (this year the island will welcome more than three million tourists). Starry-eyed newcomers also need to learn the concept of jam karet or "rubber time", where appointments made often don't eventuate and tomorrow never happens.

And don't believe for a moment that people who live in balmy exotic climes don't have problems or that all your own personal problems will suddenly disappear behind those tropical swaying palm trees. They may do so for the short duration of a two-week holiday but as soon as the everyday life has reasserted itself, so will your usual disposition. The number of positives and negatives are about the same wherever you go and entirely depend on your own internal filters through which you view life.

If you want to "outsource your retirement to Bali", do it with your eyes wide open and read Bali Raw by Australian author and Bali resident Malcolm Scott. It is a must-read for anyone who is thinking of travelling to Indonesia's Island of the Gods.

As for my own "outsourcing", read more here.

 

Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.

From PADI-master to pizza-maker

Oliver at the Catalina Country Club

Another Barramundi Night at the local club where we chatted with a young German, Oliver Haas, who, after years of globe-trotting through South-East Asia and working as PADI-master at the Gangga Island Resort in North Sulawesi and the Nabucco Island Resort in East Kalimantan, has now settled with his Indonesian wife Lanny plus two kids in the Bay where he makes a living baking pizzas. "Please Sir, I want some more."

Oliver and Lanny at Nabucco Island Resort

On our way to the club we briefly stopped at the marina where an unusual boat had caught our attention.

With a Russian crew of six and an Australian who joined them at Brisbane, this 15-metre wooden replica of a Viking ship has travelled from Europe through Africa, then Thailand, Indonesia, and now down the east coast of Australia on its way to the Wooden Boat Festival in Hobart, before continuing on its round-the-world trip.

Mind you, it's by no means a quick voyage: a GOOGLE search revealed that it had arrived in Darwin in November 2011, a good fourteen months ago, where the crew, under its Captain Sergey Sinel'nik (37), began their search for a cheap place to park the boat in dry dock for several months, until the currents and winds were right to proceed once again.

It also caught the attention of the local rag who reported on it under the headline Viking ship sails into Batemans Bay.

 

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Such an unfair world: When a man talks dirty to a woman it's considered sexual harassment. When a woman talks dirty to a man it's $2.50/min (charges may vary).

Australia has a new national holiday

The elections have been called for 14 September 2013. Good! My birthday is two days later by which time the election results should be out and I really have something to celebrate: an Australia liberated from the clutches of Julia Gillard and the Labor Party!