Greek Drama with Euro-Neuro.

The unity of Europe with a common currency was a dream that was destined to become a nightmare. It was conceived in good faith but the genes were so diverse and far apart that the result could not have been but a mule, neither a horse nor a donkey, a sterile disambiguation at best.

The United States of America has at least a common language and common culture. Going from north to south there is a common architecture, language and common goals. Through work and credit card they hope to ‘make it’. A simple philosophy of materialism that more or less, (lately a bit less,) that has stood the test of time. And with Hollywood and Gridiron thrown it they have somehow achieved a kind of unity that by and large seemed to have worked for its population.

Just look at Europe and its diversity. The question should be asked; why this need for commonality? If anything, its diversity should have been encouraged and maintained instead of it artificial made homogenous with the push of the Euro.

The Greeks should have been allowed to remain the architects of democracy. Let them sit around cafes, it worked very well in the past. There is a need for the Greeks to do their own thing.

What would a common European culture be like? Should it be like the British, a hotchpotch of chasing something forever obsolete with their love of complicated tradition and dislike of the new? Should it be the simplicity of the Scandinavians or the thriftiness of the Dutch?  Or should it embrace the German method with its icy emphasis on order and meticulous organizational qualities? Perhaps the French way, with its food and love of fashion and truffles. Spain with paella. Oh, Portugal with its deliciously char-grilled sardines. Unforgettable.

The different work ethics, the different languages and above all the different cultures cannot make for a united Europe with all ambitions and its entire people being the same. Europe should celebrate its diversity and share the good but not at the cost of differences.

Years ago, train travel on the Continental express Genoa- Stockholm was an unforgettable experience, not least with all the pass-port controls and different currencies. Why did we ever think this needed weeding out? What is the benefit of this Euro efficiency when it all ends up being boring and monotonous? What are we alive for? Remember the custom officers (Douanes)? They all wore different caps and showed such different idiosyncrasies. Some would look you in the eye and try and determine levels of honesty, or, if capable of smuggling rare cheeses or African diamonds. Other would just nod and walk on. In Genoa you bought a small bottle of wine and half a chicken passed through the train window for 500 lire. In Germany, a Brodchen mit Kase or Bock-wurst.

What’s the point of going to Greece or any European country and not use a different currency? I went to Melbourne last week-end and ended up landing in a different kind of Sydney. Not one Iota of difference. I could just as well been in Perth. The same Harvey Norman frontages, the same large car parks with Big Macs golden arches. The sameness of a stifling all encompassing ennui of dreary monotonous architecture. Is that what the Euro-Visional behavioral architects envisaged? Surely not!

From Rambo Amadeus;

Euro skeptics, analphabetic, try not be hermetic. Euro-Neuro, not be skeptic, hermetic, neurotic, pathetic and analphabetic.

Forget all cosmetic, you need new poetic etc.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHnqF5PLP2w

The Fitness Machines with heavy Engineering.

It makes you lose weight just looking at them. If you thought those exercise machines of a few years ago had reached their awesome limits, look again. I walked past a sport shop late yesterday afternoon and promptly lost three kilos. There they were, all lined up behind the window; ready to mangle you into a skinny frame. They are massive. Breathtakingly ambitious in teaching you a bitter lesson in fitness. You wonder how they would even fit inside a normal home. Mind you, the rotund (obese) probably live in those large homes specially built for people bigness and slimming equipment.

A few years ago, the fitness machines could be folded and put under the bed.  Now, of course, any home worth living in has to have a gymnasium together with blocks and tackles to hoist thighs and stomachs onto the equipment. A while back I wrote how those exercise machines could be put to use for electricity generation. I am sure that the combination of slimming down to a more lithe form and making electricity could easily be an election winning strategy for any party.  I can see a combination of Mirabella and a tubby Scott Morrison tied to an endless treadmill very easily.

No, the slimming industry has gone into larger designs as never before. The psychology of slimming and fitness dictated the industry into a complete overhaul and re-think, hence the bulldozer look like slimming equipment of today. The move for fitness and slimness has to be for equipment to be so intimidating, so large and devastatingly serious, that it reduces the participant into slimming by just looking at them. Is it the comparison of the size of those giant machines next to the purchaser that makes anyone look smaller and slimmer? I saw an exercise bike with a fly-wheel so big; it resembled something out of a Hunter Valley coal powered generator. A clever ploy! The bigger the machine, the smaller one looks.

There is perhaps a bit of glibness even a mere hint of hypocrisy in my attention to weight and fitness. If the ingestion of lamb and pork chops including spare ribs year after year are anything to go by, in my case they kept me slim and taut. Not for me the Roly Poly of anything being overweight. So I guess, weight might well be a combination of genes and lifestyle, especially considering that looking at old photos we were so much thinner even though the diets of yesteryear with mutton and fatty foods was hardly any more healthier. We did go around the streets a lot more, Billy carts and all.

One thing got me perplexed. What do people look at when on one of those giant machines, treading away hour after hour? Assuming it is set up in the bedroom or even a gym, it is hard not to assume the exerciser is looking at a wall or perhaps a piece of furniture, may be a bed or kitchen cupboard. Perhaps some might put up a picture of Mount Everest or The Matterhorn and imagining they are climbing it, eventually it must get terribly boring.

This is why I ask myself; why the hell don’t they go out and do the treading on the street, on the footpath with an ever changing landscape as one puts feet after feet forward.

What has happened to walking?

“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.’