With the weather bleak, stormy and struggling to climb above 10c, Anzac Day was appropriately somber and into remembrance at our Southern Highlands. The clouds overhead were racing towards a letting go of dread and relieving rain.

We had watched some TV and after the bugling stopped we felt a drink was not totally out of order. We can remember dread of war even better when surrounded by a roaring log fire and a lovely lunch at the local pub.

On days like that, my own memories go back to 1940 Rotterdam and my birth just after that city was bombed. Not that I can remember much of my birth! What I do remember were the dodgy German rockets the V1’s and V2’ being inaccurate, often coming down near us and well before their destination which was the UK, especially London. This was during the latter years of the war.

The more cheerful memories are of those Lancaster bombers dropping food over Rotterdam and I can still see my dad maniacally running towards those dropped bags of nutritious biscuits, risking getting killed by the dozens of overhead planes dropping the food without parachutes. Food was urgently needed and some thousands of people, mainly children had perished of hunger in that desolate city during that last dreadful winter. My birth city.

After arrival at the pub which was chockers with people, young and old, we had trouble finding a table but kept an eye on a couple that had obviously finished as she was wrapping her shawl around her elongated neck. She had a lovely Modigliani look about her. I was looking forward into taking her still warm seat.

We ordered a simple Angus Beef hamburger with chips and after paying were given one of those buzzing disks that go off buzzing and moving about the laminated table when the food has been cooked. It wasn’t long after when it moved about and vibrated wildly.

Since the war and child hunger, my intake of food has always been a bit over the top. My wife often tells me to be less enthusiastic with my utensils noisily clicking around the plate. “It will not run away, Gerard” she reminds me. Also, “can you look away from your plate, sometimes?”

This time I made an effort to take it easy and even time my speed on the hamburger to be slower than that of my wife. I succeeded. This was partly due to two couples that were also eating near us. One couple, the woman with a plate of something fried and somewhat grilled looking, perhaps a large quiche with salad and he, an enormous ‘Mauger from Burrawang’ supplied T-bone with chips. They were a couple keen on each other. She had her arm admiringly around his shoulder as he was carving his way around this his T-Bone. She took delight in his appetite and he was reciprocating with every now and then speaking to her and smiling. They were obviously in love. You can tell, can’t you? It’s the way people are radiating towards each other.

The other couple were just as nice looking but no keenness or love. He was enormous, a bit like a T-Bone as well, bull necked but fiddling with his mobile phone nonstop, interrupted only by sticking his fork into his food next to his phone. She was pretty and kept looking at him. She appeared sad. I think she knew the situation together was doomed. He had no interest in conversation and would just mumble something when she tried to engage. We felt like kicking him. You fool; don’t you notice her at all? What was the point of having lunch together?

As we, left the Courtyard had gotten very lively; Two-up and Two down in full swing.

Tags: Anzac, Modigliani, Rotterdam.V1, Souther-Highlands, Two-up, V2

With European markets spooked again, it’s the Dutch that are the culprits this time. The Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has offered his resignation when the support by Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party was withdrawn. The markets dropped over 2% and with an early election now looming, the predictions are that the winners will be the Socialist Party with a possible doubling of seats from 15 to 30. Geert Wilder’s Freedom Party is on the wane and predicted to lose some seats.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-04-24/dutch-pm-submits-resignation-to-queen/3967930

If elections are held in the Netherlands, possibly as early as September, the most likely scenario will be a copy of the present French election with a big increase in both the left and right vote and the traditional liberal or conservative vote ending up the losers.

What makes the recent Dutch upheavals interesting is that the austerity measures needed to bring back its deficit to a maximum of 3% of GDP is being exploited by the extreme right. Their opposition is based on the same principles that the Liberals are opposing some of the economic measures here in Australia; that economic growth is more important than bringing budget deficits down.  Economic growth above all is the mantra owned by the right.

In Australia the proposal to tax the mining industry more vigorously together with the introduction of a carbon tax on polluters is being opposed by those believers in ‘economic growth above everything else’, even if, as we all know, the continuation of polluting our earth will make the world unlivable for our grandchildren. It seems almost beyond belief that there are political ‘leaders’ who don’t belief in climate change no matter what the science is telling them.

The dogged and obstinate stance of those ‘economic growth ‘believers are what seem to be bedeviling many countries and it will be interesting to find out who will be the winners. The danger is that unless solutions are found and the people reassured that all will come good, a rise in those tens of millions of seething and restless masses could turn very nasty. We don’t have to go back all that far to see similarities cropping up that resulted in some very nasty wars.

It was perhaps never a good idea to promise lower taxes and at the same time fan material expectations of voters riding towards the horizon with more and more goodies with a never ending wealth. We now can have not one massive TV but TV’s in every room. Not just one simple modest car but multiple ones and SUV’s to boot. We expect an Iphone for the ten year olds going to private schools and our cupboards are full of tangled battery chargers and dated electronics with small buttons.

Fiscal prudence together with taxing the obscene wealthy, who are always best able to afford contributing to societies, might give the opportunity to give the restless masses seething with discontent a much needed relief and reassurance that all will come good again.

There are some who hold the view that economic growth is old hat and that governments ought to become more aware that the world is precariously close to losing out to an inevitable closing down of its support system.  Ecological balance ought to be as important as economic prudence. We can’t continue taking out more than putting back. Something has to give way. Let’s hope the seething masses will sway towards demanding its representatives to heed what the world’s ecology is telling us. Give up your squandering ways. Tighten up and balance things out. Don’t spend more that what you’ve got. Prudence even abstemiousness might give us a way out in the nick of time.

There are no other solutions that can avoid disaster.

Once again, there is turmoil in Australia. The Panadeine Forte might again be called upon to relieve a huge headache for the Government hoping to survive the latest scandal. Over 30 soldiers have now lost their lives In Afghanistan. Our surviving soldiers are now being called back one year earlier. What a dreadful mistake, was it not, to get involved in yet another useless war? No wonder our Government is having a headache. It should never have happened in the first place. Then there are all those unresolved issues about which the UN and UNHCR have been pointing the finger at us for a number of years. Is our dreadful treatment of the boat people finally coming home to roost with the suicides and compulsory detainment of refugees including children in hellish camps on a lonely island or amongst the dust bowls of the outback?

The future of aged care is going to cost billions; our carbon pricing might cost more than the tax revenue it is supposed to deliver from the CO2 emitters. The Euro zone problems might well affect our banks. What will lurk next around the corner for Australia? It just never stops.

Hang on; the headache is not about those issues at all. It is to do with rumours of an open shower door and strange cab fares with hints of sexual misdemeanors by a man who was given the task of doing funny shouting ‘order and order’ during sittings of parliament.  Forget about the drowning of ‘children overboard’ or the Australian Wheat Board shenanigans. They are mere bagatelles. What really gets a head of steam is our distaste for anything to do within our under- pants. Oh, the scandal of someone being asked to leave the shower door open and, and… the crosses in text-messages. Oh, no… What… crosses… that’s kisses isn’t it? Very dirty. What next?

The opposition is in heaven. An open shower door, gee, that must spell the death knell for Labor now.  Abbott must be going through the yellow pages getting quotes from furniture removalists with the plates being wrapped up in old copies of Murdoch’s The Australian.

Nothing is more disheartening than to see Australian politics blown up to what is at present occurring. Our indignation is being fanned by an opposition relying more and more on blown up paper bags. An entire government is now hanging on by a threat of fried air, a non scandal. This is at best a mere little quarrel between two people, nothing to do with Governing or running a country.

What does it say about the opposition that refuses to engage on real policies and prefers to focus on someone’s supposedly predilection for open shower doors in private? What depth can they still sink to? What about an unpaid parking ticket or bending over in private to pick up the cake of  soap from the shower floor? Should we get suspicious of someone coming home with a bunch of flowers? Perhaps the AFP should be permanently on stand-by outside Parliament house, just in case.

I would have thought that the abuse by Mr T Abbott on a man dying of asbestos induced fibrosis (Bernie Banton) a few years ago was far more telling of the character of a politician than Mr Slipper supposedly asking for a shower door to be left open.

You wonder where all this silly stuff comes from? Is it just a follow up from those Anglo Private School tactics? You know, it starts with a nick name and sniggering in the showers, those masters with repressed sexuality, next, if taken a bit further, a solid stint at bullying the weaker. Shit happens, they say then afterwards.

The moral of all this is?  Never leave a shower door open in Australia. It could bring the Government down.

We remain amazed that the second largest Internet-Phone provider would advise a long time customer to try and put the mini wi-fi in the garden. After almost 2 years being bound to an E960 wireless system combining Internet and free phone we increasingly were dropping out and were advised to go for the mini wi-fi. We duly received this new device and were originally ecstatic that finally our problems would be solved

. Of course, after so many years of having survived life in general, we ought to by now have grown up with enough savoir sine qua non to know that problems are a permanent part of life just like the annual weeds popping up on the foot-path or having to cut ones toenails. The problem with all businesses is that they want to sell and make profits, and in the process all honesty and morals are chucked aside.

We always wondered why they did not advice us just to get a cable connection, surely that should have been a first option. ? No, all the time, hour after hour, day after day, we dealt with heavily accented technical Philippine or Chinese experts who inevitably advised us to try this and click on that, upgrade to something else.

Finally after years of wrangling we were ready to throw in all and hurl ourselves into the local creek, when it finally came out that a normal cable connect telephone service wasn’t available from that provider in our street or area. That’s what it was all about. They did not want to lose out on a customer.

In the meantime, as if Internet and phone services had not got us into enough trouble already, I signed up with a Friendly Aussie Phone Co on a mouth watering touch-screen free phone with $ 100.- free credit every month. I could not loose, especially when I don’t use the mobile service much at all. For some reason, getting older involves getting less calls and also making less calls. Perhaps many of similar age(d) by then have given up or are dozing off somewhere in a park or library pretending to brush up on Patrick White literature or a foreign language…

I get my first account from the friendly Aussie  Phone Co for $79. – And a horrendous list of numbers with extraordinary charges per second. I kept getting ‘missed calls’ necessitating me ringing back on this ‘free mobile’. It transpires that reception or ‘coverage’ as they like to call it isn’t very good here. This results in calls being listed as ‘missed calls’ whenever someone has the temerity to call us. I drive somewhere were ‘coverage’ is normal and I get this list of missed calls. I phone back ‘on the ‘free mobile’, and get charged per second. I am now ‘locked’ in with this friendly provider for two years, can’t even get another mobile service without a court case or a new mobile number. A blind rage is sometimes welling up now.

It’s all so hopelessly complicated. Remember when a phone was something hanging from the wall? Now, almost everyone is hooked on fiddling with a device with tiny knobs or, in case of a touch screen, swiping and splaying fingers across a little square. All eye contact is avoided and conversation stifled. Six out of every eight pedestrians meet up with cars while fiddling with a device. We truly are connected.

I sometimes feel like joining the mini wi-fi underneath the Hebes or go out and strangle a sheep…

The safer Chinese Umbrella

April 2, 2012

Tags: afghanistan, America, Asio, Australia, Boat People, China, Cocos Islands, drones, the Hague

Last week-end’s Australian Review featured a double paged article about a new book being published, almost two decades after the writer’s death, written by our national icon and Noble Prize Winner, Patrick White. It’s called ‘The Hanging Garden’. Its timely rescue from possible oblivion due to David Marr’s boundless admiration for Paddy whom he quoted as the ”most prodigious literary imagination in the history of this nation.”

Hang on; national icons, I thought they were Donald Bradman or Phar Lap. It is strange that our sport heroes continue to have a greater place in our admiration than our much more enduring artists. We can still read Patrick White or listen to our Joan Sutherland but somehow dead sport heroes seem to have priority over our artists. (Do people really watch old footage of Bradman swinging out with his bat?)Perhaps this is because there is very little public exposure of our deceased artists. We don’t easily bump into them, especially not in bronzed sculptures scattered around our public parks.

We all know that people in Russia are well provided with larger than life size bronze statues scattered around most of their public parks and open spaces. Those sculptures usually depict the heroic male farm worker holding a scythe or a stout busty female pointing a sheaf of wheat skywards with a clutch of children at her feet. It’s hard to take a seat anywhere in public and not be overlooked by the revolutionaries of Russia. Enormous Lenin’s also made those eating pirozhki at Gorki Central park of Culture and Leisure a rather noble and humbling experience.

Fortunately, the bronzed sculptures are not all heroes of revolution or political mayhem. Many are also of their writers, poets and other artistic giants. While I was there I saw many very pensive and good looking Pushkins about. The bearded Tolstoys seemed to feature much less in number. This might well be for technical reasons. It is not easy to cast a figure with large flowing beard and seated in a cane chair into a bronze statue. What do you think the pigeons would do perched on the cane chair?

We don’t revere our mayhem causing revolutionaries and political   wreckers to that degree. We would be very chagrined stepping out of the train at Wynyard being greeted by a life size Beazley on horseback. Can we imagine for one moment, after a big night out at the Bankstown RSL, bumping into a John Howard with cricket bat?

We do have a stern looking Queen Victoria at the entrance to the Queen Victoria Building near Sydney’s Town-hall. She hails from such a historical distance away that we accept her as easy as we do a park-bench. She served our calm Anglo history very well. The kids just love her too.

Captain Cook is peering beyond distant horizons. He just needs an occasional dusting of his binoculars. Not much further is a mysterious bronze pig whose snout gets polished together with coins being donated for the hospital just behind it.  I am not sure if the pig polishing and coin throwing is still connected to making a wish as well! The relentless march of history has a habit of finally blurring out the edges.

Another animal cast in heavy metal is the Gundagai drover’s dog. I could not see him at the spot he was supposed to be last time. Perhaps dogs roam around even after cast in bronze.  Maybe the drover’s tucker box was getting empty.

A weird and rather spooky relic of the past is the sad and somewhat forlorn sight of a large heart kept in a jar of alcohol. It is Phar Lap’s ticker. For those outside Australian territories and our horse ignorant young; Phar Lap was one of the fastest horses to run around a race course. It was a phenomenal winner, making lots of money for the punters. I can’t imagine the horse being too impressed if it knew its heart ended up being pickled inside a jar.

The omission of our well known artists cast in bronze seems to stick out somewhat. Mind you, not far from my place we do have that famous icon, a cricketer in tarnished bronze. His name is Donald Bradman. He is famous and certainly an artist with the bat & ball. People queue up to get their picture taken standing next to him. They arrive from all parts of the world, even Fiji and Pakistan.

Are we ready to grace our parks and public open spaces with sculptures celebrating our best in the arts. Why can’t we have our greatest writer, Patrick White being honored with a life size sculpture or even a statue? I know he would be horrified but he won’t see it. His ashes were scattered around Centennial Park.  He was always a bit grumpy when it came to bestowing recognition and fame on him. He would rather stay home than face the media or the hungry crowds.

He was a modest man. Even so, we do need to give greater recognition to our creative artists…For posterity.  For our children. They need to know and see our artists as well as the sporting heroes.

What about a Joan Sutherland in bronze, a corrugated zinc alume armored Sydney Nolan? Perhaps a Brett Whitely in shimmering stainless steel next?

Just let’s start first with Patrick White though. I can see him already, jutted jaw, his mouth firmly set, looking straight at us. A bit miffed but pleased about ‘The Hanging Garden’ also been published.

‘Most impressive’ is what I thought of last Monday’s ABC’s 4 Corners program on how China is transforming itself from a rural backwater into one of the world’s most formidable economies. It is estimated that it will be the world’s number one soon.  How do they do it?

http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2012/03/22/3461200.htm

Is it education or has China always been a country of forward looking people? I mean, those hidden terracotta warriors and their horses were not there just by accident. It gave us a pretty good indication of an amazingly creative culture even at 200BC. Fancy, having the modesty to bury them. In Australia all we have managed so far is to have kept Phar Lap’s heart inside a bottle of alcohol. If it wasn’t for the Danish Vikings, our Opera House would never have been built either.

It’s no mean feat to build one city of 200.000 within seven years, let alone dozens of them. I have trouble getting my car’s pink slip done within the eight week time limit, or much worse, forgetting to do my zipper up after I have used the local men’s on the stroll to Aldi’s with a shopping list firmly clutched in my hands. “Don’t forget the toilet paper”, still ringing in my ears.

Slothfulness is not in the Chinese psyche. Meetings were held whereby the farmers were told by the village elder to change their thinking. Instead of hand ploughing the land and growing pigs they must develop a mindset of ‘business’ for the future and educate the children.

The children were seen root learning very diligently. Grandparents were shown to pick the youngsters up from school. Dad had foregone the hand-ploughing altogether and was working in Shanghai earning in one week what the wife would earn in one year ploughing and fattening pigs.

It was amazing to see, that despite the poverty, many still brought a mouthwatering arrangement of foods on the table, especially heralding in the Chinese New Year. When I see footage of the overfed but undernourished poor in Australia, slurping from Coke bottles and eating packets of chips, I get feelings of cultural doom and despair.

I could also not believe the leanness of the villagers. Was it a result of hunger and hard work or was it also their diet which seemed very much based on eating many greens. Everyone seemed well dressed. I mean, very clean and there was no rubbish lying about. I always wondered on how so many hundreds of millions lived, how did they survive?  How come they seem to be forever smiling and laughing?

The hacking away at the clay with a hand held hoe and the lure of earning big money didn’t prevent one husband from wanting to return to his farm. The wife refused, became stroppy and told her husband to keep earning money in the big city. The kids have to go to school, she added. There was more than a hint of marital whiplash about in that couple.

The one thing that seemed to shine through was their connection to each other and family and an indomitable will to make the best and succeed. Money making was the way to the future but so was their love of kinship and family.

Now back to those Terracotta soldiers. The facts are amazing. Current estimates are that in the three pits containing the Terracotta Army there were over eight thousand soldiers, one hundred and thirty chariots with five hundred and twenty horses and one hundred and fifty cavalry horses, the majority still buried in the pits. Then there are musicians, comedians and other non-military figures. All are life-size.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terracotta_Army

We are always dazzled by the art of the ancient Egyptians and the influence of the Greek civilization on our western world… but the Pyramids and Parthenon seem to be somewhat insignificant compared with the history of the Chinese. Perhaps both are almost unfathomable in how it was possible to achieve such enormous heights during that time.

I wonder what will be dug up from our times, a large intact veneered Mac Mansion with Caesar-stone bench tops and tangled heaps of zinc alume, Chocó boxes, Apple tablets, and many leaf blowers with pebble-crete lawn edgers…