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| By John Ray |
Some Memoirs
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I originally wrote the post below for my DISSECTING LEFTISM blog but I think it has a place here too. "Die Judenfrage" is German for "The Jewish Question" and is an expression used by both Karl Marx and Adolf Hitler so there was an element of historical awareness in the title I chose. It was actually a bit of a tease. Most people seeing the title would have expected something antisemitic in what I wrote -- but, as you will see, they would have been disappointed Most Jews must be heartily sick of being forever singled out for discussion and scrutiny but it seems that it was ever so and ever will be. And in my utter folly, I am once again going to voice a few thoughts on one of the most hotly contested topics among Jews: Who is a Jew? My present thoughts arise from the "wise" British judges who recently decided that Jews are a race. Since there are Jews of all races -- including black ones -- that is arrant nonsense. Yet it is also partly true -- in that various genetic studies have shown that many Jews do still have in them some Middle Eastern genes. So for Jews as a whole it is true that Israel is their ancestral home as well as their religious home. Nonetheless, it seems clear that Jews are a religion, not a race. And the test of that, it seems to me, is that Jews do accept converts. Try converting yourself into another race: It can't be done. But many Jews are atheists or something close to it, so how can Jewry be a religion? The easy answer to that from an Orthodox viewpoint (with which I am broadly sympathetic) is that being Jewish is not a matter of belief but of practice. A Jew is someone who follows Jewish law (halacha). What you believe is very secondary. Deeds speak louder than words. Christianity is belief based but Judaism is practice based. But there is also a much simpler answer: MOST religion is hereditary. And those who inherit it are often not zealous practitioners of it. My late father, for instance, always put his religion down on official forms as "C of E" ("Church of England") and had no hesitation in doing so. He in fact seemed rather proud of it. Yet in all the time I knew him, he never once set foot inside an Anglican church. So why cannot Jews be the same? Even if you are not religious, you can still have a religious identity. Because I am an atheist, I never bothered with getting my son Christened but I considered that a knowledge of Christianity was an important element of his cultural heritage so I sent him to a Catholic school -- in the view that Catholics still had enough cultural self-confidence to teach the Christian basics. And they did. And my son greatly enjoyed his religion lessons -- as I hoped he would. When he was aged 9 however, he said that he wanted to become a Catholic, which of course I was delighted to arrange. So he was baptised and subsequently had his confirmation lessons and was confirmed. These days many years later his beliefs seem to be as skeptical as mine -- which I also expected -- so what motivated his desire to become a Catholic? He wanted to have a religious identity. There was no pressure on him but he was greatly impressed by some very faith-filled people in the church and he wanted to identify with that. And I imagine that he still puts himself down on forms as "Catholic". So a religious identity can be quite a significant thing for many people, not only Jews. It is a part of belonging -- and that is a very basic human need. Jews in a way are lucky there. No matter what their beliefs are, they still know that there is always one place where they belong, if they ever want to acknowledge it. Once or twice a year I still attend my local Presbyterian church (at Easter etc.) and I certainly feel that I belong there. I feel at home with all aspects of it. My mother was a Presbyterian of sorts so that was where I was sent as a kid for Sunday School -- and that has stayed with me even though I no longer believe. So, again, one can have and value a religious identity even if one's beliefs have very little to do with it. And the lady in my life -- Anne -- is only very vaguely religious but her background religion is Presbyterian and there are many habits of mind she has which I know well from my own family, and with which I am therefore very much at ease. Sometimes when she speaks, I hear my mother and my aunties speaking too. She has a Presbyterian mind, or a Presbyterian way of thinking -- perhaps Presbyterian assumptions. I think that in a similar way, most Jews probably have a Jewish mind too. Attitudes and habits of thought may in fact be the most important parts of a religious heritasge. I am sure that everything I have said above will be mumbo jumbo to most Leftists but, if so, that is their loss. | ||
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I arranged one of my occasional poetry nights for my son Joe on Saturday night. There were 7 of us: Joe and Samantha, Anne and myself, Jill and Lewis and Joe's mother Jenny. It was great to see how well Lewis has recovered from his stroke. He got up and down my front stairs all by himself and seemed as mentally alert as ever. Haggis was on the menu for the dinner but Jenny can't eat haggis because of her gluten allergy so she got French (lamb) cutlets. As lamb is now dearer than lobster in Brisbane, some of the others present may have envied her. The haggis was however praised as usual. Anne had haggis a couple of times in Scotland during her recent trip and she said that the haggis I buy is better than what they sell in Scotland. I ran the after dinner poetry a little differently this time. Instead of whole poems, I just printed out short excerpts of a lot of favourite poems and had us all recite them together. I thought that that would embed them in Joe's mind a little better. I also then got him to read out the first verse himself. My reasoning is that reading a poem once is not the main pleasure of it. It is KNOWING the poem that pleases most. If any of my Indian tenants were nearby they must have wondered at these strange chants emanating from my dining room. They probably put it down to a worship service for some god. In India there are all sorts of gods, of course. We even tried to sing some of the poems for which we knew tunes but the result was pretty discordant. That would have added to the weirdness to any Indian listeners, I imagine. The poem we had most success in singing together was, rather strangely, the Eton boating song. We had a big range among the poets -- from Chaucer to G.M. Hopkins -- but we had two poems each from Blake and Tennyson. | ||
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  Pictured above are a couple of "Blitz" trucks in mint condition. There were a number of variations of them. You see above, for instance, that they came in both 6-wheel and 4-wheel versions. They were made in Canada by both Ford and Chevrolet during WWII as part of the huge Canadian contribution to the war effort. Male Canadians and Britons in those days were men, not the whining mice that most seem to have become under Leftist influence in the postwar era. My interest in the "Blitz" stems from the fact that my father used to use one in his work as a timber feller ("lumberjack" in North American parlance). Once you have felled a huge forest tree, you have got to get it out of the bush somehow -- either to a rail siding or a road where you can load it onto a truck. Unlike his father, my father did not use a bullock-team to "snig" (drag) the log along a bush track to its destination. He used a Blitz. A Blitz was originally designed to negotiate the often difficult terrain leading up to battlefields and it therefore had both 4WD and a double-reduction gearbox. It was slow but tough and versatile and could go almost anywhere -- which made it ideal for forest work after the war. And it was immensely popular after the war. They were all over the place in country areas. They were often used as tow-trucks. The picture below is an indication of how many there were before they all eventually wore out.  What I would like to know is how they originated. They were apparently designed in Britain but look like no other British vehicle. My suspicion is that the design was a copy of an Opel Blitz of the period. Opel is/was the German tentacle of GM. So I suspect that the British just copied a successful German design. I have however not been able to find a picture of the Opel Blitz of that period. The name "Blitz" certainly suggests a German origin. "Blitz" is the German word for lightning. On the other hand, maybe the name is simply ironical: Whatever else the Blitz was, it was certainly not fast. There must be a million collectors of military vehicles worldwide and a Blitz in good condition would certainly be most prized in such circles so I hope at least one collector reads this and is able to give me the history behind the "Blitz". | ||
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Anne got back from OS on Sunday so we had a small celebration on Monday night featuring a bottle of Moet etc. She got to see lots of places, mostly in Britain and Ireland but also in France. She went over to France on the Eurostar and found it very cramped. It amused me when she told me that the Parisians she met were friendly. Everyone else says otherwise. But Anne is herself exceptionally friendly so it just shows that if you you yourself are friendly, most other people will be friendly too. In other words, Anne's experience in Paris was a reflection of how she is rather than how Parisians generally are. She did get down to Glyndebourne, and up to the RSC at Stratford, both of which she loved, of course. The opera she went to at Covent garden was some modern rubbish, however. She found the Louvre very crowded and that detracted from her time there. She also got up to Orkney and saw Scapa Flow, which I somewhat envy. Much history there. And the people on Orkney were friendly too, of course. And she met some friendly people on her way to Glyndebourne as well! That must be as unusual as finding friendly people in Paris. She also took afternoon tea at the Ritz, which she had to book long before she left Australia. Even with five sittings, it is enormously popular, despite the price. It is so dear that I shouted her and her sister, June. June went over about half-way through Anne's trip to keep her company at Glyndebourne etc. And they both loved the experience of what is probably the world's most famous afternoon tea. | ||
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Jenny very kindly made me a dinner of Tonkatsu last night. It went very well with Hoisin sauce, Japanese ginger and steamed rice. Having a Chinese sauce with Japanese food is a bit odd but I have always liked that combination. Joe gave me a copy of his honours thesis, which he hands in very soon. It is in mathematics so it is all Greek to me (literally!) but the general layout and English expression in it seemed very good. I am in no doubt that he will get a First. And UQ is a "sandstone" University so that means something. Below is a page from his thesis. If you can make anything out of it you are better than I am! 
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Yesterday was Jenny's birthday so I took her to a good Indian restaurant at Mt Gravatt that we both like. Jenny updated me on all the family gossip and I was rather surprised that there is another pregnancy in the family -- a Chinese girl. Anyway the baby is much welcomed by the couple concerned so that is the main thing. I gave Jenny a cheque for her birthday and arranged to send Suzy a cheque so that she can have her confinement in a private hospital. I am also going to put up here an email that I like from a distinguished French scientist. I get emails passed on to me at times and this one was not addressed to me so I am not going to put it on any of my science blogs but I just had to post it somewhere. The writer is a leading expert on the relationships between disease and climate and the "THIS!" that he is commenting on is a quite ignorant article on that topic which recently appeared in "The Times" of London. The "Times" article rather hilariously claimed that global warming would cause huge amounts of illness, just as cholera once did. The email seems to me very French, particularly the last sentence: I have just returned from Singapore. I am nauseated! | ||
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| I usually go over to Jenny's place on Mothers' day for lunch but today was a bit different. Jenny put on a BBQ using her new BBQ area. And the food was good of course. The twins were there plus Paul and his Suzy and Von had her Simon. Russell was off sick, which some of us attributed to swine flu! Joe, I and Nanna made up the party. I am sure Jenny was pleased to have all 4 of her children present. Twinny Suzy's pregnancy was much discussed. Dec. 16 is the due date but she already has scans. Fortunately she is not having twins. Being herself a twin, descended from a long line of twins, it was a peril. She is quite a small person so it would have been hard for her if she had twins. I already notice a change in her. She seems more level-headed or something. Paul expressed great enjoyment of the computer shop memoirs that I put up recently (April 27 below) so I promised him that I would also put up a small account I wrote at the time time when I tried to buy an above-ground swimming pool for my house at Faversham St. -- a pool that Paul remembers favourably and which is where Joe fell in twice when he was a toddler. On both occasions I had my eye glued on Joe so I fished him out within seconds and he came to no harm. My purchasing expedition: Most pool shops at the time were located not far from one-another -- on the Southside where a lot of new housing construction was taking place. And being long experienced with shopping in Australia (and hence VERY cynical), I took my Yellow Pages (business directory) with me on my expedition. I was not bargain-hunting and I was not looking for anything unusual: An ideal customer, one would think. What I wanted was an 18' circular pool (pools still seem to be sized in feet) but the first shop I walked into said that they only stocked the 15' size. I left them to it. The second pool shop I walked into was staffed by a woman who said her husband was away that day and she could not give me any prices. I left her to it as well. The third pool shop I walked into had one salesperson there and a queue of about eight people lined up to buy chlorine etc. I figured that it would take around half an hour before I even got to state what I wanted so I left that lot to it as well. The fourth shop I walked into did sell the size I wanted, served me promptly, had one installed out the back to show me what it looked like and could arrange installation next week. I therefore presented my Bankcard and they were promptly $2,000 richer. $2,000 in those days (about 20 years ago) would be equivalent to around $4,000 now. But what about those other three shops that had seen the same $2,000 walk in the door and promptly walk out again? When businesses spend millions on advertising to get a customer through the door, what can they possibly have been thinking of to be (apparently) completely unconcerned about a "big ticket" buyer walking in and then promptly walking out again? Why was only one out of four firms able to show basic competence at what they were doing? I am sorry to say it but I think it's just Australia -- as my computer shop memoirs also tend to show | ||
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Wow! It's unusual that I put up on this blog anything from the media but some excerpts I found yesterday from Handel's opera Giulio Cesare (Julius Caesar) really bowled me over. See below: Sheer soaring genius! Anne is going to Glyndebourne this year so I hope it is Giulio Cesare that she sees. Having a counter tenor depict one of the greatest military geniuses of the ancient world is terminally weird but it works -- thanks mainly to Handel's music, I think | ||
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Today I get the sutures out of my ear resulting from my last cancer excision a week ago. Healing has been very good. Getting cancer on your ear is a bit pesky but my regular plastic surgeon was well up to the challenge. Jenny has been looking after me to to some extent while Anne is away in Britain and she made me a GREAT Indian biriani last Saturday. I had the leftovers for tea on Sunday too. A biriani is a very fancy curry and rice. I was thinking of Anne just now and an amusing exchange between us came to mind. She comes from a very similar background to mine so I speak broad Australian with her, using all the brilliant old Australian slang that I love. You CANNOT express yourself as vividly in standard English as you can in Australian slang. I also have attitudes that were mostly mainstream when and where I grew up -- in North Queensland in the '40s and 50's. So I asked her once whom I most reminded her of -- thinking that she might name other Queensland old-timers such as her wonderful old nonagenarian stepfather, Bill. She named a number of people -- all of whom were DEAD! I am definitely a dinosaur. One of the great ironies about Australian slang is that it is no longer understood by many young Australians, who have their own slang, mostly of American origin, I think. It survives among working class people and country people pretty well, however, but where it survives best of all is among Australia's outcasts: The Aborigines (blacks). A lot of their language is from yesteryear. As they are in a sense the most Australian of Australians, it is somehow fitting that their English is the most Australian too | ||
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| I noticed that ton katsu seems to have vanished from the offerings at my local Japanese sushi train. The place changed hands a year or two ago so that could explain it. Anyway, when I arrived there this evening, I asked the proprietress if I could order some. Rather to my confusion, she had no clue what I was talking about. But she asked the head chef, who is fairly elderly, and he knew all about it so I got a nice plate of it after all. I suppose that it proves what Japs sometimes say: That ton katsu is actually a German dish. I suppose it is. It is just crumbed pork basically. But it is a popular menu option in lots of Japanese restaurants. Koreans also have it but they call it don kats. When Paul was about 11, Jenny said she would cook him anything he liked for his birthday dinner and he immediately nominated tonkatsu. Clearly not a lad brought up on traditional British meals of meat and 3 veg. -- as I was. Though my mother made a good dish of spaghetti on occasions. When Jenny cooks tonkatsu I like to have it with hoi sin sauce -- a Chinese sauce so not at all authentic -- but I like it anyway. I got a bit of Japanese mustard with my tonkatsu tonight, which I treated with great respect. Japanese mustard can be VERY "hot". Jenny cooked lots of exotic food for me when we were together. I remember when Joey was about one, he had green poos, as babies sometimes do. So Jenny took him to the mothercraft nurse. The nurse asked Jenny: "You haven't been feeding him anything unusual, have you?" Jenny said No but she said she was thinking: "Only a bit of larb moo". Larb moo is Thai minced pork, a dish we all liked. Anyway, Joey came to no harm. I had some more plastic surgery today. My appointment was for 8:30am and I was on the table by 8:45am and eating breakfast at my usual Italian restaurant by 10am so that is the sort of efficiency I like. The dermo said that the wound came together well after the cancer was excised so healing should be rapid. Private medicine sure beats public medicine but it does cost a bomb. Still, I worked hard during my youth at one of the world's most unpopular and stressful tasks -- landlording -- so I can afford some extras in my later years. | ||
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On Saturday Joe and I had dinner together at the local Chinese. The ambience there is 1960s cafe but Joe liked that, somewhat to my surprise. I am glad he is not a snob. We talked about secret men's business, mostly concerning human relationships, and I was pleased that he already had fully on board most of the things I think important in that department. Largely because of a natural modesty, his social skills are in fact of a very high order and I predict that he will one day be Head of School in a university mathematics department somewhere. Then last night (Monday) Jenny made me some egg-rolled pork, a little-known Korean dish that I particularly like and which she does well. Russell and Suzy were also there and we had some interesting discussions. At most family dinners I spend most of the time talking to Ken, Paul or Joe about men's business so I was not at all up to date with all that is going on in the family. So it was a good chance to catch up with that with Jenny and Susan to talk to. Women keep up with all the personal comings and goings far better than most men do. Russell seems to me to have good attitudes and values from a traditional Australian perspective. I am sure he will make a first-class father when that time comes. And he's got a rather loud voice too, which suits an old deafy like me. | ||
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I put the following post up on my Australian Politics blog but it occurs to me that I should put it up here too. I reproduce below a small memoir I wrote in the late 1990s about computer shops. Joey tells me that many such shops are just the same these days so I think the memoir still has relevance Computer people are generally held to be pretty bright but my experience with computer shops has left me wondering. For instance: Around 1990 I had been told that Amiga computers have very good software for helping pre-schoolers to learn to read and write etc. So I tried to buy an Amiga for my then three-year-old son, didn't I? Naturally, as computers are complicated things, I wanted to see the use of the software demonstrated before I bought. So I went into the computer shop of one of our better Department stores (Grace Bros. in Sydney) and asked for a demonstration. I found that they could indeed demonstrate two teenage-type games to me. They could not, however, demonstrate anything else as "We cannot open the packs". So I sought out a specialist computer store didn't I? Now I already had an IBM-type computer so I knew this was not likely to be a joyous experience. I seem to be invisible in such shops. As far as I can see, in computer shops everyone always seems to be on the phone and customers in the shop can just go hang. And those phone conversations are long. They just seem to be so much more interesting than the boring business of actually selling to a customer. So I walked into a rather big example of such a shop at what should have been a quiet time of the week in the hope that maybe there would be one person there who was on the ball. But no, I turned out to be invisible again. This time, however, the worm turned. I wandered out the back to what seemed to be the boss's office and asked the man there (who was, of course, on the phone), "Is anybody selling here?" His response? "Just wait out the front and someone will serve you". I said, "But I have already been waiting for some time and no-one has said anything to me." His reply? "What do you want?" I said, "I want to buy an Amiga." "Don't sell them", he then said and returned to his phone call with evident relief. He did not want to be bothered with a piddling $1,400 sale, did he? (At that time the average male gross wage would have been about $350 per week). So next I went to a small computer shop in the hope that a small firm might be keener. Again, of course, I was invisible until I asked someone if anyone was selling here but I did then get some attention. Yes, he did sell software for pre-schoolers and the Amiga was indeed ideal for that but he had no software for pre-schoolers at all in stock at the moment so try him again next week. So by that stage I still had not managed to buy an Amiga. Eventually I found a small retailer with a heavy foreign accent who was so keen that he offered the lowest prices AND even delivered the Amiga 500 to me at home. He actually travelled for over an hour through Sydney traffic from his shop at Campbelltown (outer Sydney) to Lewisham (Inner Western Sydney) to make the sale. Funny that he was foreign! (Northern Italian, it turned out). Now let me tell what happened when I first decided to buy an Atari ST computer: I knew virtually nothing about Ataris but I did already have a 286 (i.e. an Intel machine) and an Amiga so I knew a bit about computers generally. One thing I certainly knew was that the big expense with computers is not the machine but the software. So when I rang up the main computer firm that dealt in Ataris (United Computers) to enquire about Atari prices, one thing I wanted to know was how easily I could get public domain software for Ataris. I was put on to the firm's apparent Atari "expert" to discuss this. I said that I knew that some Bulletin boards had Atari software and asked how I could get such software onto Atari disks. If I downloaded it on my IBM machine would the Atari read my IBM disks? If not, would I have to buy an Atari modem program to download the Atari files direct onto Atari disks? I was told: NO you will need to buy an expensive program to enable an Atari to read IBM disks; and: YES you will need to buy an expensive Atari program in order to use your Atari for modem work. Both these answers were of course bare-faced lies. Ataris read IBM disks as easily as they read their own and the commonly-used Atari modem programs, like Amiga and IBM modem programs, are mostly in the public domain or shareware. Anyway, their lies just ended up costing them business. I concluded that since the software was going to cost me such a lot I had better economize on buying the machine. So I bought a secondhand Atari rather than a new one and United Computers lost a sale. The same firm also sold Amigas and on a later occasion quoted me outrageous prices for Amiga disk drives -- around twice what other people were charging. They also tried to sell me a box of high-density 3.5" disks for $55 -- then normally available for $20 and later available for $10 or less. Needless to say, on both occasions I walked out of the shop with my money still in my pocket! And what about the time I tried to buy a complicated piece of software off them? They tried to demonstrate it for me but could not get it to work. I offered to buy it anyway on condition that I be allowed to return it for refund if nobody I knew could get it to work either. They refused my offer! "But you could just copy it and then return it", they said. Maybe. But the fact that the software concerned was on CD-ROM should be mentioned. The CD was going to cost miles less than a hard drive of similar capacity would have cost me. Anyway, I once again walked out with my money still in my pocket. And then there was the time I got a secondhand copy of the game "Dungeon Master". As it was copy-protected, it had not been backed up but had just been used straight out of the box. The original buyer did the right thing and relied on the retailer to provide any backup needed. By the time I got the game, however, it had died, so I took the disk, box and manual to United Computers and asked for backup service. They undertook to provide this at a charge of $5. Quite reasonable -- at first. I then waited -- and waited -- and waited. After two months or so I gave up, asked for the stuff back, obtained a Blitzcopy cable and re-copied the game courtesy of another owner of it. United's excuse for the delay? "The game was out of production and our supplier had to write to America for a copy". But if this begins to sound half reasonable remember that Dungeon Master was at the time arguably the most popular computer game ever. Could they really not find another copy of such a game? They were obviously not even trying. They sure knew how to encourage software piracy! Or didn't they WANT to sell software? I mentioned above how when you walk into almost any computer shop all the staff are on the phone. Occasionally there is a receptionist there who knows nothing about computers and whose only function is to ask you to wait but that is about as good as you get. The only exceptions seem to be when the shop is run by Asians. When you walk into one of their shops you find them on the phone too but they immediately say something which must be the Cantonese (or Urdu) equivalent of, "A customer has just walked in. I will call you back." They then get up and serve you promptly. The only way I ever found of getting reasonably prompt attention from non-Asian computer shop staff was to say, "Excuse me. I want to buy a 486". Since the 486 was at the time the top-of-the-line IBM-type machine and cost accordingly, they then put the phone down and paid some attention to me. It was amusing to see their faces when I told them that I did not really want to buy a 486 but just said that as it seemed to be the only way of getting served. Mind you, with firms like United Computers (who of course eventually went broke) even that trick may not work. I know someone (Jason Marianoff) who once went in there to ask seriously about buying an Amiga 3000 (the top-line Amiga at the time). The staff were too busy playing a computer game to answer his questions properly! He too left their premises without putting his hand in his pocket. He then went into business on his own account as an Amiga retailer and did such a superb job at it that he ended up as the only surviving Amiga retailer in Brisbane. So computer firms at least should think about the company they keep. If they want to sell machines they would do well to cease relying on lackadaisical and typically Australian firms like United and try instead to sign up a few small Asian retailers. They would sell a lot more gear that way. Why? Because charging like the Light Brigade puts everyone except pretentious people off and pretentious people buy Apple Macs anyway. And NOBODY -- pretentious or not -- likes to be treated like a bad smell when they go to buy something. And if a potential customer DOES get treated like a bad smell, it is very easy for him/her to go elsewhere and buy a rival product instead. And then there was the time I wanted to get a computer monitor cable copied by a firm that specialized in such work (Qld Connectors and Cables). The firm did the job and got it wrong. The copy cable did not work -- for a rather obvious reason. Rather than listen to me when I politely asked to tell them where they had got it wrong and how to fix it, they insisted on giving me my money back instead. They would rather lose money than listen to a customer! Customers who complained, no matter how politely or with how much justification were just not to be dealt with any further. Rather British, really, but quite incredible by Japanese or American standards. And it is not even as if the service the firm concerned was offering was anywhere near irreplaceable. Anybody can buy all the connectors they need from a Tandy or Dick Smith store and then solder them on to a bit of cable themselves if they want to. It takes little skill and less brains when all you have to do is copy the example in front of you. Another offended shopkeeper was in a way even more amusing. I wanted to replace my 486 with a machine running a Celeron chip in late 1998. I found the cheapest Celeron being advertised in the paper (by a firm called Global Computers) and rang up and ordered one. When I arrived I asked to test the machine to see that it worked, only to find that the computer was nowhere near ready for use. All they had done was put it together. They had not even formatted the hard drive. So I had to partition and format it myself (warned by past experience with computer shops, I "just happened" to have a DOS boot disk in my pocket) plus set up access to the the CD drive plus set up the soundcard -- all of which took me about 20 minutes while the salesman just sat on his behind staring into space. At the end I found that the sound did not work and pointed this out. He asked his technician about it and was told that a special piece of software would be needed to get the sound running. I asked if he would like my phone number so he could let me know when the sound was running. He did not seem to want to be bothered so I just walked out the door with my cash still in my pocket. As I walked out he said: "Thanks for wasting my time". He was angry with me because I would not buy an inoperable machine! So I then rang someone I had long known ("Game Dude") and asked him for a quote. He charged $1321 -- about $200 cheaper than what the moron was charging. And when I went to Game Dude he had everything all set up. I just had to walk in, test it and hand over the cash! Shopping around can make an amazing difference. Game Dude was of course an owner/operator of his business. Australia contrasts greatly with Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, the retailer seems to think that it is his/her job to ensure that you walk out with less money in your pocket than when you walked in. And he/she does what it takes to bring that about. He/she actually makes an effort either to give you what you want or convince you that you want something else. The retailer actually gives the impression that he/she wants to make a sale! There are no invisible customers in Hong Kong. But Hong Kong capitalism is closer to us than you might think. When I took my train to work in Sydney of a morning (in 1990), it was not uncommon for around half the faces in the carriage to be Asian. And that is already beginning to show up in the shops. And everyone knows what it is like in a Chinese restaurant. You no sooner sit down than there is a menu in front of you. You have no sooner made your selection and closed your menu than there is someone by your elbow waiting to take your order. In other restaurants it can take half an hour just to get a menu! I wonder why I mostly eat out in Asian restaurants? At any event, it has already happened in Britain. Polite brown people from the Indian sub-continent of Asia now seem to run almost all the small businesses in Britain -- from laundrettes and grocery shops to Post Offices, small hotels and electrical goods shops. Australia's Asians might come from a different part of Asia but they will do a similar justly deserved takeover in due course. "Old Australian" businessmen will just end up at the beach and on the dole, where they generally seem to belong -- modern-day Pacific islanders. Australia is, after all, the largest Pacific island. | ||
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| Today is ANZAC day but, as usual, I was too lazy to go to any of the services. Last night was a birthday dinner for the twins, Susan and Vonnie. It was held at the Calamvale hotel and the food was surprisingly good. It must be what the English call a "gastropub". I was sitting next to Paul and he regaled everyone within earshot with some of his treasured memories: Which consisted mainly of assertive things I had done in his presence when he was growing up. I don't put up with being pushed around. I push back. And Paul greatly admires that. I had in fact forgotten most of the episodes he recalled. He is himself quite assertive and says he learnt it all from me but he obviously had it in him as well. Anyway, he got a stepfather who really suited him and we have always got on very well. Speaking of assertiveness, Von really surprised me. Our dinners were rather slow in arriving so when a few people mentioned that, Von got straight up and went and sorted it out. She is so ladylike that I would have expected her to get someone else to do it. She did after all have her assertive brother Paul there and her husband sitting beside her. So there is a bit of assertiveness in Von too. She is a highly-paid lady these days so she probably needs a bit of assertiveness there. I mentioned my surprise to Suzy and said that when they were kids, she always spoke for both Von and herself. Suzy commented: "I still do". Twins do however have a great understanding of one-another -- even fraternal twins as Von and Suzy are. Suzy is wearing her hair very long these days and it is a beautiful blonde so I was very pleased to see it opposite me at the table. I have now arranged to have dinner with Joey tonight and Jenny is going to cook me some egg-rolled pork on Monday. Yum! Anne is overseas in London at the moment and I have just got an email from her that gave me a bellylaugh. Anne is a bit of a foodie and I don't think she really believed all the things that people have told her about how bad English food can be. Now she knows. I reproduce the description of her first breakfast at her hotel: "The breakfast served was a surprise, really close to being inedible. Hard boiled eggs, pale scrambled eggs, baked beans (mostly sauce) and cold meat similar to the tasteless stuff you see in Coles (which I can't recall the name for............maybe "ham delight"), cold tasteless coffee and toast finished it off" | ||
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Today is St. George's day, the national day of England (not Britain. Britain includes Scotland and Wales) so I have just hoisted the flag of St George from my flagpole. It has mostly in the past not been much celebrated in England but, thanks in part to Boris Johnson, the "Turkish" Mayor of London, it will be this year. Boris is a great joker. He does have some distant Turkish ancestry (Turkish Jewish if I remember rightly) but even his grandfather was an RAF bomber pilot in WWII and he himself went to Eton and Oxford. 
Anne flew out to London for 7 weeks holiday yesterday and I have heard of no aircraft crashes so I assume she got there safely. But did her luggage get there too? Always doubtful when you are using Heathrow airport. There have been cases where people's luggage arrived at their holiday destination only after they had returned home! | ||
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Sorry to misappropriate the name of a Papal encyclical for my heading above but today WAS a day of new things for me. We had our Westside classical music gathering tonight and one of the performers brought along a real live Basset Horn and played it. Mozart is the only composer who wrote much for the Basset Horn and it fell into disuse soon thereafter -- so very few people even had much idea of what it was until recently. Someone found some originals in an old castle somewhere, though, and it has now been revived -- with fingering the same as for a clarinet. It was the first time I had seen one. It looks like a small sax but has a surprisingly bass range. The guy who bought it along is a clarinettist and he played us some Mozart on it. The second surprise was that we had a young composer among us who played us some of his music. That would normally be a trigger for some big groans but this guy was surprisingly good. I actually enjoyed some recently-written music tonight! His conventions were of the 19th century, however -- not the raucous screeching that usually passes for modern music. One hopes that the agonized substitute for music that characterized the 20th century died with that century. I speak of MOST 20th century music however. Exceptions like Philip Glass and Joaquin Rodrigo were of course brilliant. And the third but much more minor surprise was that our usual Asian contingent comprised this time a violinist and a cellist. A Jewish violinist and an Chinese pianist would be our more usual pattern. | ||
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Well. I made it to the service at my old church: Ann St Presbyterian. Good Friday is a major religious occasion for Christians in Australia, with Easter Sunday secondary. I gather that it is the other way around in some countries. So I got up at 8am and managed to be at the 9am commencement of the service with time to spare. The church is only 10 minutes drive from where I live so that helps. Anne came along too as it happens to be her old church too. It was a communion service so went on a bit longer than usual. It felt good to be back among the sort of people "from whence I sprang". And it was good to hear a Scottish accent from the pulpit too. I feel sorry for Leftists who don't appreciate such things. It must be very unpleasant to be angry with the world about you all the time. I certainly don't think the world is perfect but I don't hate it. I just enjoy getting on with my own life in my own way. The congregation was mostly Caucasian with only a few Asians present. The Koreans who used to attend have now built their own church. The pews at Ann St were still pretty full though. The minister, Archie McNicol, is one of the old school who is not afraid to mention "The machinations of the Devil" and such things so it is real religion that gets preached there and not conventional bromides. I noticed that the long prayer included a supplication for the conversion of the Jews. Traditional of course. But I would have been happier if it had also included a prayer for the safety of the Jews. The reading was from John Chapter 19 and I was struck by the great lengths Pilate went to NOT to crucify Jesus, but the Pharisees were relentless and finally accused him of disloyalty to Caesar -- which Pilate of course could not risk. Many of the claimants on righteousness today -- Warmists, Leftists, obesity warriors etc. -- are just as nasty and hostile in my view. The service ended with the hymn "Rugged Cross" -- one of my top favourites. There is occasionally a furore when secularists or Anglicans (but I repeat myself) remove the crucifix from some church or chapel. We had an example of that very recently in Australia. They would be perplexed how to attack Ann St. Presbyterian, though -- because it has neither cross nor crucifix in it. That is because it is an old "Wee Free" (Free Church of Scotland) church and its Scottish fundamentalist builders weren't going to have any "graven images" in it -- and CERTAINLY no "idolatry". With all the polished wood in it, the interior is still a beautiful one, though. See below. I feel immensely at home there. 
A small addendum The former Governor of Queensland, Quentin Bryce, was a supporter of the Ann St. church and it appears that the present Governor, Penny Wensley, has stepped into her shoes in that respect too. I believe I saw Her Excellency at the service. She is certainly going to be present at the Anzac Day service at Ann St., just ahead. Anzac day is Australia's most solemn day of commemoration. Penelope Wensley is a Queensland-born career diplomat so her appointment as Governor is appropriate. Unlike the USA, a Governor in Australia is an appointed office rather than an elected one. The governor represents and inherits the powers of the Monarch, which are large, though they are very rarely exercised. I am sure that many Americans wish at times that there was someone who could dismiss their government if it got too uppity. At both the State and the Federal level, that power does exist in Australia. Monarchy has its advantages. | ||
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These memoirs are a pretty idiosyncratic affair. I make no attempt to keep them systematic in any way. My life is a very routine one -- which is how I like it -- so the the major events in it tend to be family occasions and my encounters with the medical profession -- surgeries to remove (iatrogenic) skin cancer, mainly. I had a CT scan of my head recently and I am rather pleased to say that they found nothing wrong with it! So something as simple as a sandwich can be a major event for me. And last Tuesday Anne made an excellent Reuben sandwich for me. I discovered Reuben sandwiches on my trips to the USA and -- lover of sandwiches that I am -- the unavailability of Reuben sandwiches in Australia has always been a great regret to me. But last Tuesday Anne had cooked up some pickled pork that she thought would go well on a Reuben sandwich -- and so it did. She made it with Jarlsberg cheese -- which is a sort of Swiss cheese (from Norway!) -- plus the usual sauerkraut and thousand-island dressing -- and it was great! I have also got her to try her hand at Philly cheesesteak sandwiches -- which she does for me on rare occasions with good results. If I were younger I would fly us both to Philly to try Geno's version but I am afraid that it is too late in my life for that. I have started to mention Denver (Western) sandwiches to her but no results yet. Update: Yes. I know that pork of any kind is the LAST thing you should have on a Reuben sandwich. I am sure that a Jew dies somewhere every time you do (To quote a famous joke) but it tasted good anyway | ||
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Yiddisher Mommas are famous for referring to "my son the doctor" -- though I imagine that that was mainly an older generation of Yiddisher Mommas at work. Perhaps it has to be "My son the Professor" these days. So the fact that my son is a white van man would no doubt be looked upon with pity by some. In fact it would be looked on with speechlessness in much of English society. "White van man" is the euphemism for the working class in England these days. And under them in the hierarchy are "chavs" -- loud young people who may or may not work but who are flashy rather than bright -- an important distinction. So I was much amused to be told by my son last night that he has some part-time work delivering computers that people have bought from his brother's business. And he delivers them in a white van! He does it only to earn some pocket money while working towards his doctorate in Mathematics so I suspect that I might still be able to hold my head high in the company of Yiddisher Mommas. The Yiddisher Mommas I have known have always been perfectly pleasant to me so I did not really have any doubts about that. Though one of them did refer to me as "the doctor", so draw your own conclusions about that! This all transpired at a birthday dinner for my stepson Paul -- his 33rd. There was the usual big family dinner around a long table for the occasion -- this time at an excellent Indian restaurant at Mt Gravatt. My son Joe lives with his mother so I see him mainly on family occasions but they are frequent so not much is lost. I was pleased that Joe seems well set in his academic career path now. He finds the work he does easy and is enthusiastic about it so getting a doctorate in it should be plain sailing. His supervisor is Chinese and the Chinese in general do seem to have a higher mathematical aptitude than the rest of us so Joe was understandably talking about learning Mandarin. I warned him about how hard that would be. Joe has however always got on well with Chinese people so I think a visit to China is on the cards for him some time in the future. | ||
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Last night Anne and I went to a concert given by the Camerata of St John's at their home base in the cathedral. It was awful. The concert was called "Four seasons" and of course featured the Vivaldi work of that name. Before we got to the Vivaldi, however, we had to endure some screeching modern crap, which put me in a bad mood for the Vivaldi, which is hard to do. And to cap it all, there was an interminable amount of talk injected into all the proceedings. I go to a concert to hear music, not to listen to some idiot's "artistic" ramblings. They even had the yap in between the different "seasons" of the Vivaldi. What an insult to think they could improve on the music of Vivaldi! It must be the least enjoyable rendition of Vivaldi that I have ever heard. It was my own fault for going, however. I should have checked the full programme beforehand. I just thought that any concert featuring "Le quattro stagioni" had to be good. I was wrong. Trying to be positive, the best I can say for the performances is that they were energetic. | ||
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Once it was only Catholics who celebrated saints' days but now lots of us do: St Valentine seems to be going from strength to strength. I think I did my bit: red roses, a card, a present and a dinner prepared with my own fair hand for Anne. I actually prepared a big antipasto for our dinner: Something we both like. It had giardiniera, olives, feta, sweet pickled cucumber slices, tinned mackerel and tinned salmon in it. It went down well. We washed it down with a bottle of Moet. I even wore an Hawaiian shirt for the dinner, which seemed to please Anne. My usual taste in shirts these days is predictably conservative -- whites and pale blues -- but Anne is keen on colour. We were going to take the dinner to a riverside park to eat but rain supervened so we had it on my verandah. After dinner we listened to the great music of old Vienna in the form of a medley of Strauss walzes | ||
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