Good for another thirty-seven years?

 

Elsewhere I wrote about the trusty old sofa which I had bought in Sydney thirty-seven years ago, and which had followed me from there to Canberra and then to Nelligen, so I could catch those forty winks on the verandah on a warm and sunny day.

After thirty-seven years, the trusty old sofa had become like the lifelong friend I've never had, and so it was with some regret that I replaced it today with a newer model which we had found yesterday at Vinnies and which is big enough to seat three people without any problems. There is just one problem: I don't know three people without any problems.

It should be good for another thirty-seven years. Will I be? Sofa so good!

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Armchair-travelling on a cold spring morning

Marina Zeas in Piraeus in Greece

 

This must be the coldest and wettest spring morning in the twenty-nine years I have lived at "Riverbend". A good time to stay indoors with one hand firmly clasped around a hot cup of tea while the other does some armchair travelling on the computer keyboard with the help of GOOGLE Maps.

I GOOGLEd Boudouri # 2 where I used to live in Piraeus and found this:

 

Click on image to go to GOOGLE Maps

 

My apartment was at the end of the street in the building with views of Marina Zea which is now obscured by trees.

 

The view from my balcony of Marina Zea

 

The photo below, 'stolen' from the Greek real estate site www.rems-hellas, advertises the old brownstone building, which is directly opposite the apartment I used to live in, up for sale and redevelopment. My favourite taverna, where I used to dine almost every night and where I had my permanent table and chair, was on the corner where the BERLONI-sign is displayed now. Whatever BERLONI is, it's no longer my old taverna!

 

 

And while I was at it, I also GOOGLEd for my old office building at # 3 Agiou Nicolaou in Piraeus:

 

Click on image to go to GOOGLE Maps

 

My office was on the top floor (not visible) in the brownish building towards the centre of the picture from where I had a 180-degree view of the harbour of Piraeus with its many tavernas in which I spent many hours, especially on a rainy day. The opening scene in the movie ZORBA THE GREEK takes me right back there - click here.

 

 

The work was challenging, not least because I was constantly second-guessing what my boss in Jeddah was doing. He told me nothing but expected me to somehow piece together from a bank's advising the establishment of a Letter of Credit, the payment of a charter fee to some ship owners, the receipt of a laytime calculation for demurrage or despatch from a consignor or consignee, and the eventual proceeds from a sale, what commodities he'd bought or sold, and to ensure that we hadn't been shortchanged on the deal. And there could be dozens of million-dollar deals up in the air - or rather, on board ocean-going vessels - at any one time!

It was one giant jigsaw puzzle and detective work pure and simple but I enjoyed it, so much so that I even audited deals done before my time, when TREFISCO, a 'Treuhandgesellschaft' in Switzerland, had been engaged to do the same work. They'd typically been more interested in collection their commissions and fees than ensuring that we had been paid out in full, and I discovered one deal with RICHCO in Amsterdam going back several years on which we were still owed hundreds of thousands of dollars which I was able to claw back plus interest.

When I reported this "windfall", my boss's laconic response was, "What took you so long?" What took me so long? I wasn't even supposed to have gone back that far as I was busy enough just keeping current deals under control. Cutting off my nose to spite my face, I resigned on the spot!

 

In my office in Piraeus

 

Of course, I should have stayed longer but hindsight comes too late ("Too late!" - an apt title for my autobiography? ☺)

Anyway, that's the difference between youth and age: when you're young, you invent a different future for yourself; when you're old, you invent a different past.

P.S. See also
the Mofarrij fleet
TARE weight
my Jeddah office
Bozenna and Ted
Thamer Mofarrij
Saudi calling

 

A spine-chilling chapter in Australian history

Read a preview here

 

We've become creatures of habit which means we've just come back from our Monday morning swim in the warm-water pool and our usual lunch at the Thai restaurant.

Filling in the hours between our swim and lunch, we shared a coffee and lamington at the Aquatic Centre's coffee shop with Roberto who, as it turned out, had never heard of the story of the shipwrecked BATAVIA.

I had heard of it several years earlier when listening to the only station my radio is constantly tuned into, namely ABC Radio National.

 

 

The Shipwreck of the Batavia combines in just the one tale the birth of the world's first corporation, the brutality of colonisation, the battle of good vs evil, the derring-do of sea-faring adventure, mutiny, ship-wreck, love, lust, blood-lust, petty fascist dictatorship, criminality, a reign of terror, murders most foul, sexual slavery, natural nobility, survival, retribution, rescue, first contact with native peoples and so much more.

 

 

In his book "BATAVIA", Peter FitzSimons describes it as "a true Adults Only version of Lord of the Flies, meeting Nightmare on Elm Street".

A great read, and I have a spare copy for you, Roberto, when we meet - not Wednesday which is our dental day in Ulladulla - on Friday morning.

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P.S. Did I mention that we also went to Vinnies where I found beautifully bound hardcover copies of "The Quiet American", "The Grapes of Wrath", and "For Whom the Bell Tolls"? Yes, I have them all and read them all, but these three beautiful editions are, as they say in "The Castle", "going straight to the pool room!", i.e. into my wood-panelled library.

 

It's our new religion! Questioning it is probably the most politically incorrect thing of our times!

In the interest of balance, also view this rebuttal

 

The Great Global Warming Swindle" caused controversy in the UK when it premiered March 8, 2007 on British Channel 4. A documentary, by British television producer Martin Durkin, which argues against the virtually unchallenged consensus that global warming is man-made.

A statement from the makers of this film asserts that the scientific theory of anthropogenic global warming could very well be "the biggest scam of modern times." According to Martin Durkin the chief cause of climate change is not human activity but changes in radiation from the sun. Some have called "The Great Global Warming Swindle" the definitive retort to Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth". Using a comprehensive range of evidence it's claimed that warming over the past 300 years represents a natural recovery from a 'little ice age'.

 

And Martin Durkin is not alone. Listen to Christopher Monckton

 

According to the program humans do have an effect on climate but it's infinitesimally small compared with the vast natural forces which are constantly pushing global temperatures this way and that. From melting glaciers and rising sea levels, "The Great Global Warming Swindle" debunks the myths, and exposes what may well prove to be the darkest chapter in the history of mankind. According to a group of leading scientists brought together by documentary maker Martin Durkin everything you've ever been told about global warming is probably untrue. Just as we've begun to take it for granted that climate change is a man-made phenomenon, Durkin's documentary slays the whole premise of global warming.

 

Of course, no one would argue with Sir David Attenborough, would they?

 

"Global warming has become a story of huge political significance; environmental activists using scare tactics to further their cause; scientists adding credence to secure billions of dollars in research money; politicians after headlines and a media happy to play along. No-one dares speak against it for risk of being unpopular, losing funds and jeopardizing careers."

 

 

And so, if global warming - or climate change, if you want to have a bet each way - is man-made - or anthropogenic; how I love this word which I'm keeping up my sleeve for the next SCRABBLE game! - why not start at its root cause: overpopulation! Even Dan Brown had something to say about it in his book "Inferno". That subject will be a cop-out as jet-setting politicians convene at the fashionable Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh in their $10,000-a-night air-conditioned suites for COP27!

I wrote all this at the end of a day when those who foretell the weather one whole day in advance had promised a beautifully warm 26 degrees; instead, I sat inside, rugged up and with a beanie on my head. And I am not the only one who knows that, among Australian meteorological predictions, a margin of error of 25 percent must often be assumed, which is probably not much better than what many of us could have predicted with a wetted finger. Will modelling of expected climate change be any more reliable?

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If the war goes on ...

Read the book online at www.archive.org

 

The title for this book, one of Hermann Hesse's least known pieces of writing, comes from two short pieces, one written late in 1917 called "If the war goes on another two years", and one dated early in 1918 called "If the war goes on another five years". They are time-travel short stories.

In the first, Hesse goes away on an astral trip for two years, and comes back to find the war still running. Now nothing matters but the war, which has mutated into random mass bombing from balloons. (Seems like a premonition of the vast destruction of German and Japanese cities, not to mention Stalingrad, from the air In WWII.)

In the story, the author goes for a walk and is arrested because he doesn't have an official permit to take a walk. He enters a Kafka-esque world (think "The Trial" or "The Castle") of incomprehensible bureaucracy, finding he is in breach of multiple regulations, worst of all he doesn't have a legal permit to exist ... Finally he is sent to the top official, who explains that all the regulations have a reason: they are to preserve and safeguard the war.

'Yes,' I said slowly, 'you've got something there. The war, in other words, is a treasure that must be preserved at any cost.' But why? The official explains again: 'Only one answer is possible: the war is all we have left!'

War is a treasure, all we have left - and anyone outside its logic is a bizarre exception - still? There might be something in it. Given all those war movies and airport thrillers (not spy stories so much as secret-police stories), our mass media full of combat-style sports, the breathless reports by correspondents from the latest front, the gun lobby and the international arms trade. Not to mention the actual fighting. There seems to be a case that the war did, indeed, go on ...

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