“Let me show you Sir.” “Just punch in your flight number and the machine will print your boarding passes, Sir.”  A friendly traffic cone breasted Virgin-Air attendant was showing me the ropes on IT travel etiquette. I had felt elated being internet savvy enough to book the three returns Sydney –Melbourne a few days earlier. The booking form appeared reasonably simple and just wanted the basics, name address etc. It’s funny but when something involves payment to others it is surprising how creamy smooth things can work out on the internet. In no time the envelope with ‘payment by credit card’ appeared with ‘this will take just 45 seconds’. Forty five seconds later I had coughed up a hearty $ 830. – including $ 27. – Credit card surcharge and another $ 76. – GST. No mention of any of that when filling out the booking form. Why the Credit card surcharge? Creamy-delights for the airlines alright.

The velocity membership imbroglio I’ll save for another article. Apparently you get points which you can use for shopping. Shopping and plane travel are so interwoven, I wonder if they are not the same. At each step travelers are tempted to connect wallet to an electronic remote suction device. They are all into it and shopkeepers are specially picked for their gleaming white teeth and hypnotically affirmative nodding heads nudging those that obstinately remain hesitant towards parting with the mulla. I can somewhat understand shopping at the tax free international travel section, but Sydney-Melbourne? What is at work here?

The first thing to notice is the nervous tension and excitement amongst those that frequent airports. No form of travel can compare. The wait for the local 401 bus to Balmain that might take an hour to get to your destination is conducive to a quick nap or endless yawning, the opposite of excitement.

Nothing like that at an airport. There is a crackling of nervous expectations. People are on edge and running. That is exactly the entrapment enticement to be exploited. The way out is to quickly stop and shop. It gives relief and content to what we feel life is about, especially life on the move, in transit and at that moment. Shopping is life lived at its fullest at any airport, even if it only involves a $ 2.80 bottle of water.

Once the plane refs up its engines to the max, just before take-off, it only confirms that having shopped works as the perfect placebo calming frayed nerves with the tensioning of the solar plexus being eased when contemplating the plastic bagged goodies stowed just overhead…

On our return flight one upward-pointed nosed woman was so loaded up even her fellow passengers overhead travel storage had to be taken up. Bag after bag was pushed overhead. The lid could hardly close. Each time it was pushed down some other item would bulge out. The owner of those bags was chortling with delight and her bovine boyfriend just kind of smiled giving knowing looks at the Virgin flight attendant. She understood.

The plane cruised around aimlessly with the cheery captain telling us there were many behind ours queuing up to land at Sydney. They had priority and we would be about twenty minutes flying around a bit here and there. I could not help but hope all those queuing planes would not bump into each other during mid-flight.

Perhaps I should have done a solid shop myself, ease the nerves.

Soliloquies and Images from Balmain

When we moved for the first time to Balmain it did not have a library. Balmain was regarded as a place best avoided, known for its crooks, killers and itinerant rabittos. Apart from those flacid rabbits; milk and bread would also still be delivered. It was also endowed with  dozens of pubs with Friday-night booze-ups and fights being very normal. On Saturday mornings same pubs would be hosed down and mopped with hospital strength disinfectant, used as a fumigant against the pervasive odor of drunks and their much loved piss-ups.

Bib-n-Brace overalls would be hanging from Hills Hoists. Walking the streets at those times had the smell of mutton bone inspired poverty and sounds of clunky working boots on their way down to Harry West’s Stevedoring. You would never give your address as Balmain, especially if you wanted a loan from The Bank of New South Wales, except if you knew the local manager. I still remember his name when he gave us a stern warning when buying a house for $ 12.000 with glorious harbour views. His name was Alan Jackson. “You are buying just a shed”, “it’s just a dump”, he said with a smile.

After the advent of the coal-loader and ship’s containerization the Balmain peninsula became a bohemian ‘in-place’ with cheap wine casks slowly replacing long-necks of ale. Properties that were shunned for decades started selling. University lecturers with their lover students started moving in. Dope smoke and songs of Sonny and Cher, ‘I’ve got you Babe’ and later Carly Simon, ‘oh you are so vain’, filtered down onto liberated streets. In with the new.

One such brave man was Larry Lake. (1916-1989) He moved to Balmain from Canberra where he had worked as head of the National Library for many years and also previously as  Liaison Officer and Chief Selection Librarian in London. He bought a small workers cottage not far from where we were living at the end of the peninsula and close to the water’s edge. When large boats reversed propellers and their engines, the landmass would shake and our mugs hooked onto the kitchen cupboard wall would do the rattle and shake.

We met Larry Lake through The Balmain Association which had formed during the late sixties. The president of The Association for many years was John Morris, who at the time was also the president of The National Trust. Monthly meetings were held in the Balmain Watch-house which wasn’t used anymore. The ‘Watch-House’ and Police lock-up had fallen into disrepair. Its original purpose was a sleep-over for knock about delinquents and the permanently inebriated rough necks of the Balmain and Inner West during the period that Balmain was one of the roughest neighbourhoods in Sydney. This ‘Watch-House’ designed in the Georgian style by the Colonial architect Edmund Thomas Blacket was rented out to the Balmain Association for a nominal ‘Pepper and Salt ‘fee.

Helvi and I became members of this Association and Larry Lake suggested we could transform one of the Watch House cells into a children’s library. We couldn’t believe our ears. A library? At this time Balmain must have had some books but they would have been far and wide in between. Hooves and Horses more likely with Woman’s Weekly and Pix scattered around some of the more affluent terraces.

It was a hay day for communal living in the truest sense. I am unsure if this ‘community spirit’ is still thriving elsewhere. Perhaps it has and is blossoming in those new mining communities with the influx of so many young couples keen on making it. It certainly has disappeared in Balmain. There are hardly children about with none playing about with Billy-carts. Where are they?  Are they perhaps inside with X-boxes or have they been with replaced by remote roll-a-doors and multimillion extensions with huge micro wave ovens and security devices. Both parents are most likely working and pale looking. Children in Child-care at $ 100. -a day, who wouldn’t look pallid? The kids remain well hidden.

But, going back, it was extraordinary how so many good and gifted people got together and all at the same time. Larry Lake, a book expert. John Morris a conservationist and President of National Trust, right at the time of large scale demolition orgies throughout Sydney. The Balmain Watch House and the Children’s Library kept functioning till Leichhardt Council decided to stop the book famine and gave Balmain its own library. There were some odd ball aldermen too, Nick Origlass and Izzy Wyner, ‘spindle legs’ Phillip Bray and so many others.

We went to Larry Lake’s wake. He was a terrific bloke and good friend. He had a hand in saving and restoring “The sentimental Bloke” a very good Australian film.

http://afcarchive.screenaustralia.gov.au/newsandevents/at_archive/screeningsevents/sent_bloke/newspage_156.aspx

They were the good times.

Don’t get ‘Face-Booked’.

‘One is often lost for words’.

It is a nice expression but apart from the dumb being lost for words and perhaps the catatonically depressed, it is not true for most of us. Surely those that can speak have words to say? I know that in the world of IT and SMS many words are now at risk of disappearing. Scores are lining up and join the club of text and twitter (TnT). A  new language has been born, almost overnight. We now do ‘lol and Rolf’ with the best of them. We are anxious and forever on our qui vive,  not to be seen as total IT oafs and risk being left behind.

My new mobile has a most irritating habit of giving complete words when texting a message in letters. Boy, did I get close disemboweling myself while Rolfing on the floor with this predictive texting. How do people know all those ways of setting the technical boundaries on their equipment? With the new mobile which I thought was about the simplest one can buy, there are still too many features. It would lock when not in use. The instructions to unlock were mysterious because it would abbreviate without explaining what the abbreviations stood for. This is another source for hurling the cat around. Why is so much now abbreviated? Is there something wrong with a word that is complete?

The irony of texting giving complete words when one just wants to write a single letter gets completely lost on the TnT (text ‘n twitter) aficionados when they  go and twitter using single letters almost exclusively or, at best abbreviated abbreviations. I must confess though, I too have become entangled betwixt text and twitter. Yet, I am not bored, just old and short tempered with abbreviations; it doesn’t help anyone with looming Alzheimer  to try and deal with de-ciphering ‘http, cred, FSG Cdis and F.offs including 2finger etc. We all know that Twitter only accepts 140 characters including punctuation, dicritals and periodos. To say the most with the least is the Art of tweeting. Some tweets have been so succinct they have made their writers instant millionaires.

Not so lucky are those that piled into Face-book shares. With the price on day of listing at $38US they are now trading at $26.72, that’s  down 30%. Right now we are witnessing the birth of a new verb and it is ‘to face-book’. Many claim to have fallen victim and have been fatally ‘face-booked’. It means to have been lulled into something by mass hysteria.

The fanfare surrounding Face-Book listing was the culprit. The reality was so obvious and so clear, to stay away from the public listing, but many could not resist the hoopla and wanted but wasted a lot of money. Face-book’s clientele of 900 million spend about a $ 1.70 a day per person. Now compared with Amazon which clocks in at $ 32.50 per person, it makes the Face book share not much more worth than $ 7.50 per share. The market is betting that Face Book (FB) is going down with put options outpacing call options. A put option is an option whereby you sell at the present price but don’t settle till a later date hoping the price has gone down so your settlement amount is less than when you sold them for the higher price.  A call option is the opposite and bullish in nature.

I don’t know why I went off at a tangent into the share market but there you are, take it or leave it.

At least I still have words and so far have avoided having been ‘Face-Booked.’

For many days my Twitter and Face book were out of action. The word ‘Twitter’, even when looked up on ‘Google’, would send shivers through my computer. The page would freeze, go stiff with rigor mortis and turn blue and incoherent. It turned out that ‘Blue Screen Page’ is a well known phenomenon. No one knows why, but scientists and engineers are working on it. There are a host of web- sides claiming they can cure Blue Screen. Those sides promise to be helpful and start off with a free scan and a further promise to clear it in less than 2 minutes. Not true. The free scan just turns you almost into a jellified blob of rage when showing their scan result. I was told, despite having Norton security, I had 129 viruses and 766 ‘problems’ on my computer. But… for $29. – (US) by credit card you will be Face-booking and Twittering again within a couple of minutes. Everything in the US seems to be measured in two minute time spans. Things move very fast there.

As soon as I see that the ‘free’ scan is a scam I naturally delete the page. Not so fast though governor!  Turns out those free US based scam web pages are difficult to delete. Most don’t have a delete option. Over and over, one is urged to down-load the credit card option and pay up. No wonder capitalism is in trouble, the cheek of it all.  I thought by turning off the computer I would get rid of those ‘free’ scan merchants. Not at all. I switch back on, and there is that same persistent page again. After a lot of moving backwards and forwards the scammers finally gave up the ghost.

I decided to take firm action and took the laptop to a reputable (non free-scan 2 minute) computer shop run by very young but savvy experts. They helped me before with a problem without even charging me. Always a good sign! They switched on the laptop and… it worked perfectly. There was my familiar Tweet page and Face-book. I couldn’t believe it. He put it into my list of favorites, “Gerard Twitter.” No charge again. Boy, was I on a roll?  Was so happy I shouted regular latte coffees and Danish delights all around for the two of us.

After doing some shopping at Aldi and walking home I did not give the Tweeting a second thought. That shows how supremely confident I was. Later on in the evening after a couple of Merlots, I felt like a good Tweet. It only needs a few words, so what the heck. With Face-booking I always feel it needs a more serious and literate level of involvement. That’s why I usually, but not always, do the Face-booking in the morning after a good night’s rest.

I opened the lid of the laptop and after a few seconds the home page arrived. I went to my list of favorites, just relishing the moment and allowing the luxury of hovering above “Gerard Twitter” button… and….. The Blue screen page was back on again. I was devastated, crestfallen. A blind fury welling up, totally lost for words.  Fuck Face-booking, fuck Tweeting and Fuck life.

Life is just like that. We move around getting involved into the ambit of things that can go wrong. Perhaps excluding relationships, there is nothing quite like the Internet Technology world whereby one walks a fine line between remaining sane or hovering on the edge of going out in the deep of a dark night and strangle a sheep or a Belgian draught horse. The world of IT including Iphone, pads, kindles and Apps is there to try our mettle. Have we got what it takes? Will we survive or end up smashed on the rocks of Blue Screen phenomena?

I survived and am here to tell the tale. What was the solution and how did the logistics of the Blue Screen Page get repaired. My daughter told me to always try and switch off the computer and then the router. I had switched everything off many times but not the router which gives me the ADSL internet connection through Telstra phone line.  I went downstairs in the bedroom where both phone and router are next to my bed blinking away intermittently. I switched all off and waited. I switched all on again and climbed upstairs to my computer. It all worked. Twitter and Face Book are back. Hoorah! I try and not think why Helvi’s computer never had this Blue Screen and yet uses the same connections. But there you are. That’s the devious world of IT. Never question it. Acceptance is the answer.

Never take it out on the Belgian Draught Horse.

Surviving an economic depression.

As a survivor from the last turmoil between 1940- 1945, I wonder what one could do in case of another downturn. How would people react when there is an economic collapse whereby the norms of a working society go askew?

The banks have gone broke. The rush to withdraw all savings turned into a stampede. The next day there were chains and padlocks on all the banks doors. There was a curt little notice that the bank would be closed till further notice. People queued up and small groups formed outside staring at the bank’s doors as if by magic they would somehow open up again. It was a strange and discomforting diversion from the norm.

The housing investment market started to wobble a few years earlier. Houses took a long time to sell and soon they reverted to dwellings that people lived in. With the banks closed, mortgage payments became superfluous. Roofs over one’s head became again what houses were originally, it kept the rain out. Keeping the rain out became what the homeless now needed more than ever. The government or what was left of it tried to arrange public buildings for sheltering the homeless.

The huge Ernest & Young multi storey building now housed seventeen thousand homeless spread out over all the floors. People did not mind climbing the emergency fire-escape stairs. The generators just supplied emergency power for some lights but excluded the lifts. The toilets still flushed but for how much longer? Rumours were going around that the Myer’s store were distributing food brought in by the Salvation Army and so far no reports of looting were heard about.

Neighbours, who previously kept themselves apart and much to themselves, very private, now introduced themselves and offered help. People started to be drawn together with sharing common needs. Fear and instinct for survival made for instant communication. “Have you got enough food” was a common question and concern for sharing became necessary. “One can get ten kilo bags of flour from the Town-Hall” someone told the neighbourhood.  Another one offered to pick up tins of powdered milk from somewhere else. It became a scramble to just see the next few days out. The closure of banks meant that money was scarce and bartering became the norm.

During cold weather fires were soon lit in public areas. People were seen huddling together talking and sharing the latest news. Some suburbs had no electricity and generators were hard pushed to find fuel for. The little fuel that was available was being kept for emergency driving only. Hospitals were still going on with caring for the sick and the government was issuing warnings that people ought to stay away from rioting youth and street fighting which had broken out in front of the Center-Link offices which had closed down as well. The police was kept busy.

Of course, the above is just one scenario that could happen. With the sort of survival methods that became necessary during the last war in Europe I can’t remember too much detail. I know more from what my parents told me than from memories. I do remember hunger though. That is something that doesn’t easily go away.

So, in short; food is the most essential part for survival. Shortage of food is still the norm amongst hundreds of millions of people around many parts of the world to-day. They experience economic depression as something that seems to last forever during their entire lives. How would we cope?

Rebekah Brooks and Phone Hacking

While the tentacles of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire stretches well beyond Britain, the phone hacking and intrusion of ‘privacy’ seems to be mainly concentrated in the Anglo world. Why, one could reasonably ask?

Well, one answer might well be our obsession with deliberately living lives that are hidden. This wanting to be hidden dates back hundreds if not thousands of years. Perhaps the pillaging, raping and burning by the Vikings on our soil left its inedible and indelible mark on our proud British heritage.  Our home is our castle and if it wasn’t for lack of money, everyone  of us would want to be surrounded by moats and drawbridges. We compromise and have blinds, thick curtains and 6 feet high fencing instead.

We like our privacy. It is the first word of preference when asked how we would like to live. Where is my privacy? This is often the primary requirement when moving into a new home. When neighbours apply permission to extend or build something next door, the possible invasion of privacy is often the reason for councils objecting to the development application. I sometimes wonder why we build houses with windows.

We like our gardens but don’t want to be seen in them. When do the Anglos do their gardening, at night perhaps? We put in outside furniture and giant turbo driven 8 burner stainless steel gas barbeques but, by and large, we stubbornly want to remain hidden and prefer to have all that in the back yard and not at the front, risking fully exposing snags and ourselves to the dangers of the outside world.

Now, with this almost universally well known need for the Anglos wanting to remain hidden, unknown, unseen and ‘private’ till the grave, it is baffling what we are so keen about in wanting to remain hidden. What goes on behind those curtains of privacy? What lurks behind that wall or fence? Are dastardly acts of the most hideous and perverted nature  happening? Are the Anglos whipping themselves into a frenzy of orgiastic delights unknown to the rest of us?

Phone hacking outside the British Empire would never have that attraction to readers because everyone knows that the French Prime Minister has affairs or that the Italian President has a penchant for rubbing coconut oil on nubile young girls. Continentals live their lives in the open and rely on openness and community values in keeping an eye out over each other. In fact, the scandals that the Brits so delight in would at best elicit a yawn amongst most of the rest of the world.

Of course, the neuroses to remain hidden don’t mean that we are not curious in finding out what others are doing. It is a double edged sword. Make something hidden and we will inevitably want to snoop around, if only to find out if others are like us as well. This is why people were paid to do all this phone hacking.

Finally it becomes an addiction, hence those awful Anglo Sunday papers revealing who is doing the latest stint in a re-hab., or who is looking suspiciously pregnant and not even married to boot. That close up, is it proof of a Brazilian wax, surely not?  Gee, doesn’t Andrew Beiber look a bit pale; I am sure he is back on the crack-ice again, is he?

For the Murdoch Empire it was a colossal and monumental opportunity of money making. It worked while it was going on. And now, the spectacle of Rebekah Brooks in Court with her lovely tousled red hair will be another one of those continuing sagas, raking in even more money. Go for it boys.

χάος

Another big fall in world markets, billions will be wiped off and Greece is tottering on the brink of total economic collapse. Good morning!

Some European countries which were supposed to be examples of how society ought to distribute wealth more equitable are now being lined up to fall like a row of dominoes set up on the dining table of good and well intentioned but un- equitable sharing of the rich Euro baked pork dish with crackling good social security till the grave.

What went wrong? Was it the apple sauce?

The answer might well come from the dining table itself. The excessive ladling out of all those goodies without balancing it to an equal generous increase in taxation revenue was always dodgy. The expenditure didn’t match the income. A classic case of economic delusion that one can live beyond means was always a premier lesson at the kindergarten of economics. If you keep scooping the sand out, the sandbox will finally be empty.

The lure of getting more with less income seemed to have overtaken the world of capitalism. Election after election the sound economic principles of setting expenditure to income was eroded away. The voters swallowed it like marsh-mellows on a stick held above the fire of greed and avarice. Right wing governments took over with the promise of more for less and we were all seduced by this ugly Judas kiss. And look at us now? Will there be blood on the streets once again?

With Portugal and Spain queuing up after Greece with youth unemployment at a staggering fifty percent it seems to be hovering on a similar precipice into economic collapse.

In Australia we keep rubbing hands together with glee in how we seemed to have escaped the GFC turmoil with our scooping up of mineral resources. In the process we seem to forget that this is due to luck much more than sound economics. Take out China, and we too would be lining up at soup-kitchens.

Are we too taken in by the lure of more for less? Notice the upheaval in the suggestion of raising taxation on our resource mining companies. Notice how the Three hot headed Musketeers of our resource companies have taken on Australia and its citizens daring to utter getting paid a fair share of the economic resource pie. Notice too, how the principal of taxing those that defile our environment is fought against tooth and nail. Millions are being spent in advertisement opposing this very sound and principled way of making the environment spoilers pay for it. We too are cruising for a bruising being taken in by the fairy floss of more for less.

At least in Europe there seems to be a return to the left with new governments willing to find a solution in bringing the rich back to the kitchen table of give and take.  In France, the rich will have to pay much more tax and many are questioning how anyone should have more than they can possibly need. Capitalism has gone berserk and the masses are paying for the sins of the rich. The poor, for too long have been denied a share for which they have worked just as hard as the rich, which, in the majority of cases inherited the wealth enabling them, with the regimes of lower and lower taxation, to keep on exploiting handy taxation loopholes and fattening themselves on the pork crackling of lenient taxation laws.

It is not for nothing that the collapsing economic capitalist world is looking anew at Scandinavia. They were always looked at askance and with suspicion. How could a taxation regime of over fifty percent continue to thrive giving its citizens a world of social welfare that would sooner or later end in total collapse and disaster? Well, the Scandinavians did not and now seem to own the only beacon of light and insight in perhaps having a solution for those countries on the brink of economic disaster.

We should perhaps look anew at those prophets of lower taxation being the only way forward. Just look how, with the new budget, we have delayed Foreign Aid? We have the top three wealthiest in our society owning over 30 billion. Or is it 40 billion now?

How just is our society and how moral when we can’t support foreign aid anymore and at the same time support not raising taxation for the obscene wealthy?