Most days I go walking I take an ipod and listen to podcasts. Today I took my old G2 ipod, one of the larger white monsters with a directional wheel on the front. I bought it over 10 years ago at Yodobashi Camera in Umeda, Osaka, when owning such a device was still quite an exotic thing. It has over 700 songs on it, a small proportion of what the hard drive can hold, and all of them date from that period or earlier.

So it is kind of like time-travelling for me. If I play my older device these days I get that strange moment of recognition, a shiver of recollection, for a time when that song denoted a very particular moment and place for me. It might be a pathway through a housing estate, a wide expanse of park, a shopping centre, even a stairwell. The melody plays, a fleeting image from Japan intrudes, with all its associations and memories. I will never be able to listen to Alanis Morissette's Doth I Protest Too Much again, for example, without being transported to the interior of a JR train pulling out from Sanda station as I headed up-country for work in Kaibara.

Yodobashi Camera (pictured below) is an experience in itself. Next to a Pachinko Parlour, it is one of the noisiest environments I have encountered, with media of all sorts spruiking for your attention.

Another towering political figure has passed away. Only months within the passing of Gough Whitlam, Malcolm Fraser, he who usurped power in an extraordinary political coup in November 1975, has gone.

The Fraser Government - a lightning rod for all my youthful discontent - began in controversial circumstances. Not everyone would describe the events of that time as a coup, though some elements, such as the dismissal of a government by an unelected official, the secrecy, rumour and odd coincidences do add grist to that mill.

It seems likely now that Fraser was as surprised as Whitlam by the turn of events, and, nothwithstanding the Opposition's blocking of the supply bills in the Senate which precipitated the crisis, we may be able to view events more soberly.

In fact, the rehabilitation of Fraser since leaving power has been remarkable. His humanitarian efforts and apparent lurch to the left on most issues have made him a kind of darling of progressives, this underlined by his resignation from the Liberal Party.

So goodbye Malcolm Fraser, 22nd Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Australia. In the photo below, three Prime Ministers, with Fraser on the left.

Advice To My 16 Year Old Self

You don't have to be liked by everyone. Sure, it's nice to be liked and there is nothing wrong with seeking good relations wherever you go. But wanting to be liked by all means having to please everyone. And you can't please everyone, even if it was desirable.

Some people will not like you. Some will respond to generosity and warmth with coldness, indifference or cynicism. But that is not your fault. The problem is entirely of their own making.

So don't seek approval everywhere you go. By all means be yourself and be kind and generous. But you can never expect back what you give, so let that gift go without ever seeking a return. And you may discover, a kind of freedom and happiness, that cannot be thwarted.

Death comes to us all, and Leonard Nimoy sadly, passed away today. He was a goodly age, as they say, and full of philosophical thoughts until the very end. "A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP" he tweeted only hours before his death.

As Mr Spock in the original Star Trek, he loomed large in my childhood. A Vulcan complicated by his half-human failings, he stood astride the middle ground between James T. Kirk and the emotional Dr McCoy. He was for logic and reason and struggled with and against the emotions that held his fellow crew members in thrall. This element was critical to the dramatic tension of what otherwise might have been just a science fiction adventure.

Live Long and Prosper, cited in the tweet above, was a Vulcan motto that Spock often espoused. It has now passed into the lexicon and for all I know, is flying at light speed past the outer reaches of the solar system and beyond into deep space. In fact, it has passed into other star systems, many light-years away. Thence, it has boldly gone.

Rest in Peace, Leonard Nimoy.

Tom is back at school and seems quite happy this year. Hazelbrook PS have a policy of composite classing. Students are formed into classes around educational stages, not strictly by their age. So this year Tom is in a 4/3 class, with an equal mix of kids from grades 3 and 4. It seems to work well on the academic level, though I harbor some misgivings over social development.

I am still with Anglicare ER on Wednesdays and enjoy it as much as ever. I think that I was built to help and I get a huge amount of pleasure from doing it. I said once that being an ER caseworker is the closest match to a perfect fit for me. There is no greater satisfaction than seeing a client leave an interview with their life less fractured and their prospects heightened. It is all about change and though these changes may be small, they offer the opportunity for continued improvement.

On Fridays I am still toting my guitar and amps downstairs to our cafe, set up specifically for our clients. The free coffee and food, live music and friendly conversation are great but incidental to the fact that people get to leave their houses and social isolation and mix it up a little.

I have been coming to the cafe for 3 years now and it has truly been a blessing. I don't know how much longer the dance will last as wheels of sorts are in motion and I don't know where or how they will end up. Who does?

I am reminded by recent events that we seem to living in interesting times. By which I mean, there is a greater uncertainty about a lot of what we once took for granted.

In politics, decades-old business-as-usual has been turned on its head, with two state governments being thrown out in their first terms. We have had multiple Prime Ministers and leadership challenges are more commonplace, with sometimes remarkably little regard for precedent.The recent backbench revolt against Tony Abbott only underscored the turbulence of the present era, contrasting as it does with the usual elitist nature of political assassinations.

Partly this is due to the (previously alluded to) 24/7 media scramble that we exist in, where news is both process and product, or neither. Partly it is the bland bullet-point political discourse that sucks any authenticity and vitality from what should be a genuine contestation of ideas.

Strangely enough, the times may well be suited to the rise of straight-talking nationalists with an authoritarian streak, not unlike that odious group who emerged in the 1920's and 1930's. It may not be fascism per se, but it will have democratic values and pluralism in its sights.

Listening to the Slate Political Podcast this morning, I was bailed up by a line of John Dickerson's in reference to a serious mistake made by the subject of discussion. He said that it was his belief that "The worst thing about you becomes the most true thing about you." It got me to thinking about and mulling over (redundancy!-ed.) the veracity, or otherwise of Dickerson's assertion.

With public figures, this is almost always the case these days. Celebrities who have offended against children are often as not defined by that fact, no matter what changes they make to their lives or how much time passes. The Gillard Prime Ministership seemingly lost legitimacy as a result of the " no carbon pricing" backflip, which Gillard wore herself as a badge of dishonour in the eyes of many electors. In our own lives, people who commit serious breaches of trust in one way or another do tend to get stigmatized and thus redefined by the nature of their offences. But is this "most true thing about them?"

The 24/7 hyper-environnment makes matters worse, for reasons that are obvious. No-body can be let alone or allowed to atone for whatever misdeed or misjudgment occurred in their past. Even when the offence is false or unproven, the mud sticks and the truism may still apply. No-body ever said life was fair, nor should they.

Just finished Bill Bryson's One Summer: America, 1927. As usual, very entertaining. Bryson has a knack of organising his subject material in a way that makes you smile even as you are informed of something you didn't know. Which is a lot, in my case. Anyway, enough of sentence fragments!

As strongly hinted at in the title, One Summer explores events and people in a year that Bryson contends is a kind of seminal one for the emergence of the United States as a cultural and technological power. We already know that the US emerged from the Great War as a political and economic heavyweight, factors which necessarily background the book. Here Bryson weaves the stories of famous Americans (such as Lindbergh, Coolidge, Capone and Babe Ruth) with a sense of what was in vogue or newsworthy or downright scandalous at the time. The skill is not only in creating engaging vignettes and coherent stories, but in bringing the whole together over the "summer" of 1927. The stories are governed by the timeline - not being entities in themselves, but rather interwoven with each other. For some readers who prefer stories to stand as independent through-narratives, this may be a challenge. But I found that the wait was almost always worth it.

Some forty years ago a best friend and I used to troop regularly to the old Sydney Sports Ground to watch the Socceroos play home games. The Australian team at the time comprised a collection of mostly journeyman footballers from the UK, with some notable home-grown players in the mix. They were part-timers in what were then largely ethnic-dominated Australian leagues. The team played a largely defensive game, with a lot of players behind the ball.

How different today, with a strong national A-League, and a Socceroos side full of native-born footballers who play a decidedly attacking game. The win over an excellent South Korean team last night to claim the Asian Cup presents another milestone for the Socceroos. Qualification for World Cups (starting with Rale Rasic's trail-blazing 1974 side) has been achieved 3 times now. The Asian Cup puts the first major trophy on the shelf. The game can only develop from here. In one direction, methinks.



The 1974 team vs West Germany. Muller scores.



Contemporary legend Tim Cahill bicycle-kicks vs China in a modern iteration of the Socceroos. Asian Cup Quarter Finals 2015

To put my last post into a broader historical context, Japan was but one of many imperialist powers over the last 200 years. It's just that they came in somewhat late. European powers had been colonizing and plundering African, American and Asian peoples for centuries in a process that came to a head in the 19th century. China's current posture of not tolerating any encroachment on its perceived territory harks back to the poor treatment meted out to it by foreign powers during the last century of the Qing Dynasty. Japan was one of the last to jump on that bandwagon and consequently has suffered the greatest criticism from Beijing.

Japan's problem lies not only in how recent its wayward behaviour is, but how it has managed to mix up the messages. An apparent heartfelt apology is followed by a Prime Ministerial visit to Yasukuni. Regret at the outrages of the Imperial Army are followed by obfuscations about the nature of the atrocity (eg: Nanjing) or the extent, such as in the debate over "comfort women." It is a Yes, but... approach that casts doubt over the sincerity of any regret. Cue Shinzo Abe.

When I taught in Japan, the subject of the Great Pacific War, as it is called there, sometimes came up with adult students. I never raised the issue myself, but was happy to tread carefully and politely in any debate that followed. Certain patterns emerged in such discussions, usually starting with the tricky question, "Were the atomic bombings justified?" Leaving aside that thorny moral dilemma, the line of argument that followed was that Japan had been starved of resources and initiated a justifiable conflict with the United States. Putting to one side again the fact that Japan had already racked up 50 years of conquest and aggression against its Asian neighbours, the argument continued with the conspiratorial riposte that President Roosevelt had known about the attack on Pearl Harbor for some time and had allowed the attack to continue in order to get the US into the war.

I miss those class chats a lot, never mind the disagreement. You had to keep your wits about you and the disputes were always amiable.

With the 70th anniversary of the end of W.W.2 approaching this year, Shinzo Abe has weighed, with the subtlety of a brick through a window, into the debate. He is quoted today as saying that it has never been established that Japan fought a war of aggression. Perhaps in 1945 it was not deemed necessary to lay out with clarity the fact that Japan had acted aggressively, since the evidence for such a claim was everywhere to be found. Wherever one looked.

Japan seized Taiwan from China after a brief war in 1894/95, then annexed Korea in 1910. Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931, then provoked another conflict with China in 1937. The latter invasion was still in full swing when Japan attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor, before waltzing through South-East Asia on a war of, ahem, liberation and friendship.

As you can see, the evidence for Japanese aggression is very thin indeed and perhaps we should revise our textbooks in line with Mr Abe's critique.



I give you a new peace in our time!

Tom's first day of 4th Grade began today at Hazelbrook PS. Reluctant as he seemed to be to go to school, he looked relaxed when I picked him up from the Moosh this afternoon and he buzzed with chatter for a solid 45 minutes thereafter. Modern kids have a menu of ambit claims that need to be met when it comes to their new class - that it has to contain at least one significant friend, that the teacher is fun and slightly flexible in the enactment of The Rules and so forth.

As best I remember, my cohort just turned up, were allocated a teacher and classroom and got on with it. I didn't discuss preferences with my parents. But then again, I was in streamed classes until 6th grade, when a radical sixties experiment descended upon us. Mixed ability classes. From that day onward until the end of the year, my world of relative pronouns was turned upside down. And for who, whom, whose, which and that the bell tolls!

Schools are nicer places for kids to be these days. Freed from much of the pomposity, caning and petty vindictiveness of a plurality of former educators, there is much to like about modern schools. The downside is a new regime of testing and an overloaded curriculum, one that does not bode well of creating lifelong learners.

I love to learn and yearn

"To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought."

According to the best predictions, the universe may be teeming with life of one sort or another. Modelling suggests that evolutionary processes should have produced intelligent life from this happy crop, even within our own little cosmic backyard. Over 50 years ago, The SETI project pioneered the scientific search for intelligent extra-terrestrials, though there has been a curious and abiding silence over that time. Most recently folks working in this field have started to wonder where all the aliens are, given the apparent plethora of potentially habitable solar systems.

Amongst the many theories that abound over the causes of this grave cosmic silence, one in particular caught my attention. Creatures evolve over a long period of time and as best we know, in competition with each other. One species may become dominant (as in humans on Earth) and develop to a point where they achieve genuine technological significance (cue humans again). At some stage though, the technology becomes advanced to the point where the civilization destroys itself. And there is us again, maybe.

The trick is getting through this technological ceiling and surviving, which suggest a significant element of ethical and moral growth and perhaps some good luck. There are lots of reasons why I don't think our species will survive the journey past the age we are at this moment transitioning, though I do hope, for all the children and their children, and beyond, that we do.

For a much fuller and more lucid discussion of Where are all the aliens? go to this excellent article:

http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html

I like a good affirmation. And on the whole, I like positive people, by which I mean, those who adopt a sunnier outlook on life when conditions seem to warrant a more downcast demeanour. People who have a more sanguine take on experience are often kinder and more tolerant, and tend to be better company too, though not always. Positive thinking has a proper role in psychology and in life in general, if only we can remember the wise words we read the night before.

But I am not especially in favour of the snake-oil version of positivity that dominates much social media, especially Facebook. Some of this is in the magical thinking category, whilst other contributions are so obvious or platitudinous as to make anyone with any self-respect weep. There is a lot of inspiring material in the world, but the sample below is not.


It is bollocks parading itself as wisdom.

Reading Qin Xiaolong's Years of Red Dust, a series of short stories based upon the lives of the people of an old street in Shanghai over the course of some 60 years, was a palliative to all the drier histories of that period. Qin's skill involves not only drawing vividly the individual vignettes of lives in rapid change and adaptation, without overt political comment, but also in backgrounding these very personal stories within their historical context. He does this by the simple device of beginning each chapter with a blackboard analysis of the year's political events (the same blackboard is used by characters in the lane as an ersatz CCP teaching device), then allowing his characters to fill the space beyond with their lives. In this sense the book operates like a script, the stage directions establishing conditions for the characters to exist within. The first of these finds us back in 1949, with the CCP triumphant.

This wordy paragraph (my apologies) should really just have said that I liked the book and can recommend the author, who incidentally, also writes fiction and translates Tang Dynasty poetry. On the basis of a fragment of Tang poetry quoted in one of the stories in Years Of Red Dust, I bought an anthology of poetry from this period for my kindle. The translations into English may be a little dated now but nevertheless it is a delightful read.

Religion, for the most part, promotes various forms of rigid thinking. Obvious, right? You get, with belief, a bunch of rules or conventions that come in the instruction manual. I have experienced this first-hand, having become a Christian at 20, and a fairly zealous one at that. The zeal can wear off as the rules and boundaries become increasingly onerous or contradictory. I had another try two years ago but found (despite the many blessings) that the vision was too narrow. I like faith but I want one that is more inclusive. That is no slight on God (in whom I believe), but rather a critique of the flawed human end of divine engineering.

Of courses, all organisational structures engender rigid thinking. It seems to be a necessary part of the human condition that rules are needed to create socially workable situations. The looser the structure (such as in alternate-lifestyle communes), the more the inclination towards chaos and decline. Open marriages (an oxymoron if ever there was one) are doomed by the very fact of their rule abandonment.

Which makes the times we live in, centuries after The Enlightenment, all the more interesting. Attempts at trans-national unity (as in the EU) find themselves increasingly bogged down in a minutiae of bureaucracy. Extremist Islamic fighters ( I should say, terrorists) blend a medieval black and white world view with a concomitant punishment mentality. Rule breakers are everywhere and they must be eliminated.

One might have hoped that with the fall of communism (another monumentally rule-driven ideology) last century we might have respite now. At least for a decade or two. But no, it is with us to stay.

The shape of things to come, in the cosmos, always adds perspective to life on earth. Our time here, when measured against the unimaginable eons of the universe, seems like straws in the wind.

Today there was another terror attack in Paris and I suspect that, in addition to the sadness of loved-ones, freedom of one kind or another is the loser. More security and surveillance means a loss of anonymity and the freedom to express, without being monitored. Self-censorship becomes a factor - 'what can I say and how can I say it?'

So in looking forward to a time beyond humanity, one can find solace in the sheer length of the perspectives, far beyond the end of life on earth, of the earth itself, of this period of stellar illumination and the looming creative darkness beyond that.

The original of the chart below is found at : http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140105-timeline-of-the-far-future

New Year's Eve was surprisingly pleasant. Because Nadia had Tom for an extra night away camping, I was released to attend a very-late-notice party. With a decent view out across the Nepean Plain towards Sydney, a group of smart, nothing-to-prove people and some fine champagne, the evening went like an arrow towards the forfended hour.

When it came (and I surprised myself by actually being awake!), tiny florets of light appeared on the distant horizon. The large flat screen behind us mimicked this miniature performance with vast megapixels of cascading light and sound. A surreal contrast, to be sure.

NYE may be a foolish and irrelevant celebration, but it is nice to spend it in the company of pleasant people.

I was chatting to a friend this morning who was bemoaning the fact that his family were going to a party in the city for New Year's Eve tonight. It wasn't that he didn't like parties, he does, but rather the whole palaver of getting on and off trains, being squeezed by crowds, negotiating drunken fools and sundry idiots, and so forth and so on.

I have been through a similar process and found that, for whatever momentary joy one gets from beautiful fireworks, not to mention the frisson of communal love that comes from a glass of champagne, it is just not worth it. I was texting another friend this morning whose teenage son is grounded and who therefore can't go into the city with his mates for hours of pointless boredom. I remarked that New Years Eve in the West was really just the bastard child of Ground Hog Day and Waiting for Godot, minus the humour and insight - that is, hugely repetitive and entirely anti-climactic.

So, as platitudes roll from the tongues of media heads and a false sense of bonhomie washes across the multitudes, as folks discover yet again that the next day is pretty much like the last and that the chalice they hold is not only empty but largely illusory, I wish everyone a safe and meaningful New Year. May your resolutions be focused on making this a better world for all living things.

Tom had swimming lessons at Lawson Pool a few weeks ago. He has improved significantly under the aegis of Department of Education instructors - mostly elderly though very competent no-nonsense women. The once-a-day coaching over two weeks helps to ground the children in fundamental water and swimming skills, something entirely lacking when I was a kid.

So here is Tom about to commence one of his lessons on a day I thought it wise to turn up, if only to fly the flag.

Driving to Westmead Station yesterday, I gave up resistance and began listening to a ten-part history of tea on The China History Podcast. I had been putting this off for some time since I wasn't sure if this topic was going to be, ahem, my cup of tea.

Wrong again. Laszlo has a way of making the most arcane information interesting - maybe it's his unbridled enthusiasm - and so the first two parts of this ancient story passed the time nicely. Having attended tea ceremonies in Japan and been initiated into many of the practices in that country through friends and other immersions, I realized that I still had considerable ignorance and a deficit that needed to be made up. After all, I drink a few cups of tea a day and can't imagine waking up to anything other than a pot of tea.

I was especially taken by a famous poem by the Tang dynasty poet Lu T'ung, who, upon receiving a particularly auspicious present of tea from the Imperial estates, wrote a song of praise. Here is an extract from The Song of Tea, as it has become known. With each bowl, the poet moves closer to something like heaven on earth, an epiphany of the soul.

The first bowl moistens my lips and throat.
The second bowl banishes my loneliness and melancholy.
The third bowl penetrates my withered entrails,
finding nothing except a literary core of five thousand scrolls.
The fourth bowl raises a light perspiration,
casting life’s inequities out through my pores.
The fifth bowl purifies my flesh and bones.
The sixth bowl makes me one with the immortal, feathered spirits.
The seventh bowl I need not drink,
feeling only a pure wind rushing beneath my wings.

Anyone who loves tea will understand at least some of the heightened sentiments of Lu T'ung, who sat gently sipping in in his mountain hermitage on Mt Sung, in deep reflection, 1200 years ago.



Above. Detail from a hanging scroll from the 13th Century showing Lu T'ung brewing tea.

"Petruchio: Come, come, you wasp; i' faith, you are too angry.
Katherine: If I be waspish, best beware my sting.
Petruchio: My remedy is then, to pluck it out.
Katherine: Ay, if the fool could find where it lies.
Petruchio: Who knows not where a wasp does wear his sting? In his tail.
Katherine: In his tongue.
Petruchio: Whose tongue?
Katherine: Yours, if you talk of tails: and so farewell.
Petruchio: What, with my tongue in your tail? Nay, come again, Good Kate; I am a gentleman.”

My acquaintance with The Taming of the Shrew (popular with Shakespeare Competition Drama students) was renewed yesterday when a wasp stung me on the upper arm. Although the above passage did not come immediately to mind, as I was reeling in mild agony from this unreasonable and unprovoked assault, it did with the passage of time.

A wasp sting is particularly nasty. I have been stung by assorted bees in the past (an insect that has the decency to expire after the offensive), but wasps can sting many times and survive to sting again. Six hours after the attack, my arm was still aching. I realize that bees and wasps have different lives and purposes - the former's being more noble in my estimation.

An upside of this affair was that the wasp's lair was discovered inside my wooden venetian blinds and that the threat has been neutralised. I too am a gentleman Petruchio, and this tale of waspish skulduggery is told.

Another Christmas has passed like so many others. This year part of my family (the NSW part) had lunch at my brother Michael's flat in Collaroy. Tom came with me this year and was indulged by his uncle's. Ancient PS1 video games played in the background while the lunch was prepared, the table was set, and a little part of England descended upon the northern beaches. Leg ham, roasted vegetables, pork and puddings were high on the list and cracker-pulling explosively rounded off the afternoon.

This has been ever so. My mother, being English, has always insisted on a traditional English Christmas dinner, no matter what the weather. And we have always been happy to eat it, regardless of the sauna-like conditions. I remember other families in our street having seafood lunches or cold salads and meats. Somehow this seemed very unChristmas-like, as if antipodean barbarians had somehow crashed a tea party. Maybe it was just common sense.

Below - my brother Peter and son Tom chat with the expanse of the Pacific in the background.

Tom and I and another family did a short walk to a nearby bush cliff-face the other day. At the base of the cliff, which was not high, the boys began crushing the soft sandstone into a pale yellow powder. The repeated gesture of rubbing the rocks into sand sent my thoughts flying to my youth.

Fifth grade. Killarney Heights Public School. The man named Armstrong had not yet set foot on the moon. Our school playground extended beyond the bounds of the asphalt into a small ragged portion of bushland adjacent a neighbouring house. An army of small boys emerged every recess and lunchtime to dig into the clay banks of the bush (this became a game involving small plastic figurines called Crater Critters, see below). When we tired of this, a production line of short-panted proletarians began grinding down sandstone rock into a powder that would be funneled into discarded empty beer bottles. This went on for some time as I recall, at least until teachers cottoned on to the industrial nature of our play. At some time during Fifth grade, the area became out of bounds. End of an era.

I also recall this as a time when I chatted avidly to my erstwhile best friend, Michael Chapman, about pop music. He was hugely enarmoured of the Australian star Russell Morris (he of The Real Thing fame). We would clamber over rocks and wander the long stretches of concrete and grass discussing the smallest details in the life of his pop idol and flicking through Go Set magazine. It was a different time to now. Cassette players and tapes were the current biggest thing. Families had one Hi-Fi system in their house if they were lucky. In most respects, we were beholden to what was played on the radio and that was the Top 40. Or rather, a dozen or so songs played over and over all day.



A young Russell Morris as I knew him in the late sixties.

flowers in martin place

slow the forests grow,
hard grief-bed of unasked giving,
long, stem-lines of shadow.

Today, terrible news from a school in Pakistan where many children and teachers have been murdered by Taliban violence. I am not sure what god these people claim to be representing in their mad dash to a virgin-saturated heaven, but the monstrous, vengeful and blood-seeking deity that they appear to worship cannot be real.

There is no reasoning with this kind of person. They are zealously and exclusively right in their own addled psychopathic way and to stay for a chat would invite certain death. They are not the only ones to represent a dead-end in human development, but they are clearly the most visible at present.

It is sad whenever life is lost pointlessly. Sometimes this happens in the everyday run of life - the mundane trip to the shops in a car comes to mind. Other times it happens as a result of wider conflict, such as civilian fatalities in war. Things happen according to laws of nature and fallible beings, as we are, operate within these realms.

The Lindt Cafe siege and shootings in Sydney fall somewhere between these fields. Malign human agency, as happens in wartime (and finds an equivalency in political extremism) meets the sheer possibility of chance; just being at a cafe for a cup of coffee.

I missed most of the media hyperbole yesterday but the little I did hear was sufficient to show that reason had been abandoned to a hyper-reality and a sadly predictable political cant of the worst kind. If anyone with ill-intent and a desire for saturating publicity was watching, then they will know what to do.

I was pleased though at the desire of many to show solidarity with others who might otherwise have felt threatened by the turn of events. The #I'llRideWithYou phenomenon shows that it possible to rise above prejudice and step out to help with change-making behaviours. In the end, little differences and changes can make a world of difference, if only we could see the long perspectives available to us in the moment.

I was talking to a friend last night. He told me that his children enjoyed playing Minecraft but he was worried about the potential from strangers entering the Minecraft world. So as a good parent might, he gathered a supportive group of parents and set up a private Minecraft world on a designated server. There were 12 player licenses so good school-friends of his children filled these slots as players. For the first month all went well. Industrious Minecraft communities emerged and collaborated with each other. By the second month, however, trouble emerged. Worlds created by individual players found themselves subject to overnight attacks with pixelated TNT bombs. Hours of work was destroyed anonymously in seconds.

At the same time, other school friends who were not part of the private Minecraft world began picking on the select group. There were bullying and taunting incidents. By the third month, the parent closed down the server. The experiment was over. He described it as being like a re-run of "Lord of The Flies"

This experience would have made a great research thesis. It also highlights the problem of anonymity, the internet and social media. Everybody has heard of trolls - e-folks who join forums and the like with the sole purpose of offending. Faceless and nameless, they are free to indulge whatever dark fantasy or nasty inclination they like. They thrive on hurting and outraging. It is much harder to do this is the real world, for fear of social ostracism.

I could proffer any number of theories on the psychology of this kind of person, but I won't. Here is a Minecraft pixelate instead.

Summer has broken from the barrier and it is hot and steamy. Stifling days are later punctuated by often fierce electrical storms. Birds sit open-mouthed and splay their wings on the ground to get relief. There is a growing lassitude.

Having finished an online Certificate of Tesol recently, I have just begun the free add-on Certificate of Business English. I seems unlikely that any great joy can be derived from teaching course book BE ( have a look for yourself) but there is a lot to be gained from teaching a more general ESL with business characteristics, so to speak. This was my approach when Yes English landed a BE contract with a Kaibara-based engineering company (Everloy Nozzles) around 2005.

I took the class over about a year later and quickly jettisoned the awful course book that nobody in the class appeared to understand. In practical terms, these students, all engineers, did not need the grindingly dull terminology of business speak, but rather, a way to communicate in English with their Chinese peers. So this is what we did, adding little relevant asides that touched upon the kinds of technical terms that might arise from the work that they did.

I really enjoyed this class and was sad to leave them a year later. Sometimes my mind drifts to rural Kaibara and I wonder if those young engineers are still with the company, whether married or not, or if they still hang out at Panchinko Parlours, where the whirl of noise and smoke is their lot.

A couple of photos won't go astray here. In the first I am approaching the company on the way to a lesson. The second is a group shot of my final class, in the board room, no less.

Following the sad accidental death of cricketer Phillip Hughes in the Sheffield Shield this week, a simple tribute went via twitter - #putoutyourbats. Most Australian families have a cricket bat lying around somewhere and cricket in some form was a part of most boy's childhood. For me too, for some of the happiest memories I have are of cricket down at the park or up against the front garage door. I took a small cricket bat to Japan to show the kids an alternative to baseball.

The putoutyourbats is such a simple and beautiful tribute to Phil Hughes. It captures a mood of sadness at its essence and requires no words. Here's what Macksville Public School did today.

Rest in Peace Phillip Hughes.

Periodically, the poor and disadvantaged are singled out for special treatment. Through no fault of their own, they find themselves in receipt of tough medicine. Sometimes they starve to death, such as peasant farmers have done on numerous occasions in China. Others, through want of food resort to petty theft and are variously executed or transported vast distances to penal settlements, there to linger at the pleasure of a monarch. Many of the poor are located in dangerous or vulnerable circumstances and are often the first to suffer when war or natural disasters strike. So it isn't a lot of fun being poor. You tend to die younger and lead a much meaner existence than those better off.

Having got all this learnt though a copious historical recording, it is a wonder that the modern poor should continue to come in for unsolicited attention from politicians. The little that they do get in welfare payments (should they be unemployed) is made to feel like a lot. In fact, it is too much, according to this line of thinking, for it stifles the will to succeed and kills the will to independently thrive. Every so often a malingering exception is found (such as someone unfairly claiming multiple benefits) and this sets aflame the passionate fire of conservative thriftiness. It is a thriftiness who sibling is a punishing zealot.

I see the poorest of the poor in my work and I have yet to meet a person who didn't want to get out of their circumstances and do better. Often humble, even timid, they are usually just looking for a way to make ends meet - a difficult task indeed when their rents alone total a substantial part of their income. So I have little time for the cigar-smoking, self-congratulatory, full-bellied politicians and their erstwhile pundits in the media. They have no notion of going without, or having to make the choice between feeding their children, paying the power bill or keeping a roof over their head. The poor may always be with us but there seems to be no good reason to punish them over and over again.

I am coming to the conclusion that moaning about 'the youth of today' is universal. It crosses cultures and periods in time. At the moment I am reading China Witness by Xinran, a brilliant book about the fast diminishing and largely silent voices of the generation of Chinese who witnessed the major events of the 20th Century. Their lives are characterised by a lack of. A lack of food, decent shelter, proper sleep, security, choice, education and so forth. They have a surfeit though, of meaning, through a heightened sense of duty, commitment to a cause, the camaraderie of adversity, the idea of something greater than themselves and a huge work ethic. These kinds of stories are very apparent in the interviews that Xinran conducted in China Witness.

But even these kind, humble and resilient people fall for the 'the youth of today' syndrome. It is clear that, while they are often proud of the achievements of their own children, they nevertheless feel misunderstood and undervalued. If they told their stories to their children they would be ridiculed, they often report. Their kids are too busy getting a life and making money. Self, self, self.

More commonly in the West these days, the language is couched in terms of generational differences. Gen X are this and Gen Y, or Millenials are that. There follows a screed of faults that might be described as the 'usual suspects', with laziness, incompetence and selfishness heading up any list. Most reports are anecdotal, meaning that generalizations should not be drawn, though they are anyway. It has been ever so.

not-yet-summer heat
insouciant pen, jet stream
plying unstarred skies

I have an interest in American politics. It goes back to my late teens, when I used to devour Newsweeks and tune in to The Voice of America. Of course, teenagers should probably be doing other things, like hanging out with a wine cask in a dimly-lit room. There were lots of things I should have been doing, but alas, the ancient music of John Dowland and the poetry of John Keats kept me from them. And other things too, like tinkering with old Ford Cortinas or puttying-up geriatric rusted-out Valiants. Clapped-out cars kept me busy for such were the cars that I could afford.

But US politics filled a gap. My despair at the dismissal of the Whitlam Government meant I needed a surrogate and politics in our biggest ally was red meat, for the most part. I followed all the Presidential races from Carter on. I'm still doing that, and you can add the primaries too. These days I have the luxury of podcasts and online newspapers and commentary to fill out the details, for there is much commentary and considerable detail. There is an awful lot of everything, though it's pertinence is not always apparent.

Now, with the mid-terms in the US, the Republican Party has majorities in both houses in Congress. It's hard to know whether the party of Abe Lincoln will decide now to start governing or continue with their inexplicable Get Obama campaign. I can understand a conservative party being pro-enterprise and business-minded, fiscally-prudent and so forth, but I don't get the weird climate-denying, anti-government, Obama-is-a- Kenyan-Muslim bullshit. A little bit of it has caught on here too, as if being a conservative these days entails becoming an irrational nutcase as an adjunct to all the other more grounded signifiers.

It's important too. Look around the globe. We need Washington to function because the alternative is a policy vacuum, or something even less appealing.

I love space exploration. It's expensive and it can be argued that the money should be spent elsewhere, such as on poverty alleviation. There is a case to be made for that, just as there is case to be made for channeling defense spending in a similar direction.

Having said that, journeys into the (relative) unknown are inspiring. They touch in many people a sense that humans can achieve things that go beyond the squabble of Earthside troubles and the interminable cycles of the human condition.

So to launch a spacecraft at a speeding comet and then successfully land a probe (never mind the current difficulties) is remarkable. The scientists and technicians involved in the Rosetta/Philae project should be lauded in a similar way that the astronauts were in the Apollo project in the late 1960's.

It is sad then, when one of the chief scientists involved in this unique mission, should be humiliated at a moment that should have been one of praise and thanks. Dr Taylor's choice of Hawaiian shirts may be eccentric, but the bile and misplaced criticism by many fellow scientists is shameful. These kind of PC explosions are not in the interests of harmony or equality, and only strengthen those who genuinely oppose such ideas. The poor man simply had no idea, so maybe one of his peers could have kindly and privately pointed out his wardrobe malfunction.

Confucius prescience on this matter seems apt.

"When a wise man points at the moon, the imbecile examines the finger."

Russian tanks in Eastern Ukraine. Who'd have thought it? Surely the Minsk protocols for a ceasefire, which failed to stop an (illegal) election in the rebel-held provinces, the appointment of a 'Prime Minister' in said provinces, and the subsequent threat of retaliation by the Government in Kiev, could have nothing to do with it? Aside from my getting the subject and object of my sentence too far apart, weren't Western leaders ready for the inevitable Russian defense of it's rebel forces in the East? Maybe not.

There has been much talk of a renewed "Cold War" between Russia and the West. Obama was technically correct in claiming that the ideological differences are not the same as they were. Ditto the line up of states. Eastern Europe is now firmly in Nato's camp, which may be part of the problem.

It strikes me that Russia's behaviour resembles more closely that of a great power state from the 19th Century, than that of the former Soviet Union. Sending warships on the tails of its leader is classic gunboat diplomacy - just ask the British.

The West has mishandled the post-Soviet world badly, failing to grasp what Russia's strategic interests were, increasing the size of Nato (rather than dismantling it) and allowing itself to be played for a dupe by the canny Putin ever since. War is not a possibility, given Russia's nuclear arsenal. Some sort of new framework needs to be developed, one that necessarily includes Russia, if we are not to lurch from one crisis to the next.

I can't say that I remember much of either Anzac Day or Armistice Day as school events in my childhood. That is, I can't recall a single commemoration service at primary school or high school, though surely these must have been annually observed. Or were they?

In the 1960's, much of the steam had gone out of Anzac Day and I remember talk about it's disappearing or diminishing in the same way as Wattle Day had. But it seems that the passing of all the Gallipoli veterans and a new found nationalism (thanks Gough) has re-energised Anzac Day and established it as our de facto national day.

While the efforts of the Anzacs in their ill-conceived venture in the Dardenelles were genuinely remarkable, other battles seem to have been overlooked. Consider the Battle Of Amiens in August 1918, when Australian and Canadian infantry divisions supported by massed ranks of British tanks broke through the Hindenburg Line, advanced a dozen kilometres, took thousands of prisoners and demoralised the exhausted German army. Ludendorff called it "the black day of the German Army". Rommel, a young soldier in this conflict, though not at Amiens, vowed, "I'll see you at Tobruk" Or words to that effect.

So I guess that we are stuck with commemorating a military defeat. Not such a bad thing really. It's hard to develop a sense of hubris when you lose.

Recruitment Office 1914

The camera interrogates a crowd, lines
of faces that are bright, proud. Wide smiles announcing
the certainty of the times. Unapologetic
hats caught in mid-air, boaters, bowlers and
flat cloth-caps hang, jocular exclamations
before the yet-to-be. We see
men in rows on a threshold of dreams,
fleeing work, wives , a tedium of nows
flung aside for the game, the chance, a
glimpse of some luminous eternity
other than their own.
Lads jostling at the door, portal
for their newly-minted selves, trade
browns and greys for green, what is,
for what’s unseen.
Soon, the earth’s clamour
for bruised skin begins, the dive and mash
of jugular rend awakening.
Most, finding home, at last
in the field’s crowded chalk.
From joy to dust is not so far,
a hundred autumns past.

With the anniversary of The Great War upon us this year, I have been watching a lot of good TV (thanks History Channel) and reading a lot of material that touches upon the conflict. Some of it has only recently come to light. Photos from the period are also fascinating. The colourization of old footage from the trenches(and the resetting of the film speed) have humanized the conflict again. There is a lot of material extant for anyone with an interest beyond the predictably sentimental discourse of political leaders.

A few shots of Recruitment Offices in 1914 caught my eye on the weekend. I guess I remain surprised at the enthusiasm and bravura with which young men embraced the mad rush to war. Jumping into their Georgian shoes is no easy thing, for the times were much different to our own. Some things, of course, will always remain the same. Tomorrow, I will print a poem I wrote over the weekend which reflects on some the photos I have seen recently and for which, in advance, I offer an apology.

First day of November. 9am. Hot westerlies toss small branches and leaves through the already heated air. I have just finished some kick-boarding. The water at Lawson Pool is cool and the sky unblemished by cloud. Families gather at the shallow end to watch children take swimming classes. An aerobics class bobs in rhythm at the deep end to an old Beatles track, which has been looped over and over with no end in sight.

A large chopper hoves into view, its powerful engines sweeping away the gentle haven of Saturday morning pool sounds. It is an Elvis style fire-fighting helicopter. For a moment, people look upward, then back, though the meaning is clear. This is the price of living in the Blue Mountains.

lately, days of heat-
your email comes like spring rain
washing me in tears

Yesterday I traded my Suzuki for an Hyundai Getz. It was kind of a sad day, because I really liked my old car. But the colour (back - think, hot and hard to clean)) and declining mechanical health meant that it was time for a change. The Getz is small and very perky and should do well, under the circumstances. Because my driveway is still unaccessible, the new car (2008 SX) is sitting across the road. Below is a hastily snapped photo.

No, no...back to Earth!

Apparently a lot of people have registered interest in going on the one-way, privately-funded journey to Mars, mooted for somewhere in the 2020's. It is one-way only because the ostensible space pioneers will be going as settlers, with zero to nothings chance of stopping the ride due to queasiness or second thoughts. Mars has a poisonous atmosphere, is very cold and water may be difficult to get at, should there be reserves of it. And quite aside from the logistical problems of hauling everything needed for survival to the red planet and then having to set it all up, there is the question of people.

Apart from the experiences of crews in the orbiting International Space Station, we simply don't know what a long period of space travel might mean for human beings, nor how living in extreme conditions might affect the psychology of what is essentially a group of strangers living together, forever. Call me unadventurous and trapped in my comfort zone if you will, but I could not be payed enough money, not billions, to undertake such a journey. Additionally, I am very fond of the Earth.

A view from the living pod. It has a certain beauty, but might become tedious or oppressive with the passing of years -

After 10,000 kms of niggly little rough-running patches every now and then, my car finally broke down today. Funnily enough, it's kind of a relief. I had taken it to a couple of mechanics who were unable to locate the problem. "Just wait till it breaks down mate and then tow it to us," they invariably said. Hardly reassuring, since breakdowns are inconvenient and expensive.

So just before Blaxland, my little car, full of musical gear for my cafe gig, gave up the ghost. I sat on a verge as B-Doubles hurtled past and wrote text messages. By midday I was back home, car-less and wondering what to do with the rest of the day. Tom wants a play day this afternoon (no car makes it harder) and the weekend just developed another layer of complexity.

Try calling it an adventure. Better than a calamity!

The seventies was the high-water mark for progressive economic policies in the Anglo democracies. By decades end, social democracy had come under increasing attack from conservative theorists and commentators, whose ideas underpinned the rise of Thatcher and Reagan in the UK and the US. Tax cuts, especially for the wealthiest, attacks on workers collectivist bargaining powers (through the weakening of trade unions)a rush to deregulate and get government out of the way, and the denigration of people on welfare benefits were amongst the menu of options available.

Today, we can still see the relentless outworking of this approach. More expensive university education, work for the dole schemes and an obsession with balancing national budgets have marginalized many people from disadvantaged backgrounds, who are generally the losers in austerity budgets. I see lots of these folks in my work with Anglicare. Most are genuine strugglers and the marks of their struggle are there for all to see. They suffer disproportionately from mental illness, chronic disease, poor educational standards, violence, drug abuse and so forth. They rarely complain about their lot in life. But conservative politicians and pundits seem to be believe that they are fair game for both moral correction and policy punishment.

So our democracy grows meaner. Being an optimist I think that things will come full circle, in time. In those days, the straighteners and punishers may still be seen, but will rarely be heard.

It is hard to describe the period during which Gough Whitlam was Prime Minister. Even to a teenager(albeit, one interested in politics) this was obviously a time of turbulent and ongoing change. Unlike the terms of most governments, in which less-than-inspiring characters mouth platitudes and score childish points off their adversaries, this one was unique. Closer to a revolution than a term in office, the Whitlam Government did not take pause for breath, such was the breadth of it's vision for change in this country.

To many of those in blazers and ties (and hats and gloves), the changes emanating from Canberra were but background noise. My home suburb being one of the most conservative voting electorates in Australia, it was a challenge to be left-of-centre. As elections rolled around, the mood in the playground was more hostile, our erstwhile peers parroting their parent's views, plastering stickers to their bags. My friend John Hawkins and I had only the staff as comrades-in-arms, though some executive staff were undoubtedly unreconstructed reactionaries.

The conservative coup of November 11 - a political and judicial coup- against a democratically elected government, was swift and brutal. It radicalized many on the left and essentially elevated the Whitlam Government, creating a kind of martyrdom as it did. For us young ones, it was disturbing. It was also a watershed moment.

The period of the Whitlam Government (1972-1975) was the era in which I cut my political teeth, so to speak. By any measure, there has never been a time of governance like it. And there has never been one since then either. The immutable facts of this Governments legislative achievements are documented elsewhere. Suffice it to say that it changed the face of Australia in a way that it unlikely to ever be reversed, never mind the perversity of conservative governments to try. To paraphrase PJK, it took us from a period of "Menzian torpor"into the modern era.

There would never have been such a government without Edward Gough Whitlam, who passed away today, aged 98. Whitlam's intelligence, vigour and vision, not to mention his charisma, was both the headquarters and engine-room of the Labour Administration. Today we can thank this government for medicare, legal reform of marriage and indigenous rights, equality for women, the welfare system, the recognition of the PRC and many other progressive policies. More than that, it created through it's sheer energy and optimism a sense of a new Australia, freed from decades of tepid conservative governance.

One day, some two decades after the fall of the Whitlam Government, I was on playground duty at Penrith High School. A Year 10 student whom I knew quite well rushed up to me, almost breathless. She had just come from a history class on the Whitlam Government and she had news that she couldn't contain a moment longer.

"Gough Whitlam. What a wonderful man! What a great government!" she gushed.

It took me by surprise. Maybe it shouldn't have, because that is how I felt when I was her age too.

Vale E.G. Whitlam

I had a good weekend. I spent my 56th birthday with my mum in Dee Why. These days she is increasingly frail and even though her mind is still nimble, she has a number of debilitating ailments. Still, we sauntered down to the Italian restaurant on the beachfront, ordering some excellent pizza. The sun was out and even though a coolish south-easterly was blowing, shorts and bikinis were uniformly present. A body of surfers sat on the uneven swell, a few swimmers chancing the waves. It was a high tide and the water had the appearance of blended eggplant and spinach. Over lunch, I recalled the times I used to come surfing with my then girlfriend, Michelle, in winter, just across from the restaurant. We would slide into our steamers and look without joy into the cold grey surf. I did it for her really, but it was still exhilarating.

Later I spent a few hours on the sofa listening to my mum reflect on aspects of her life, which I know, at times, has been disappointing for her. Back in the day, women didn't have the same choices they do now, so if you got stuck in a bad marriage, that's more or less where you stayed. It is hard for a woman of 85 to find decent male companionship, or so I'm told. The pickings are few and then, very flawed. So my mum has to endure men who claim to know more than her, or who know it all or who invalidate her experience. Just like 'back in the day.'

On Sunday I whiled the afternoon with my friend Yolly, whom I hadn't seen in a few weeks. Yolly is a smart medical professional from Shanghai. She will likely be stuck in a lower grade aged care job because of her limited English. Personally I think her English is great and her company, delightful.

So, two afternoons of gentle conversation. Nothing quite beats that.

Sometimes I think about my past in parallel with what was happening elsewhere in the world. Because I have been reading widely about the Chinese Cultural Revolution in recent times, this is where my somewhat hyperactive mind has journeyed.

It matters not a whit to anyone else, though it interests me, that while I was spending my time in short-panted boredom in classes 2A and 3A at Rose Bay Public, my cohort in China were being released from their bondage and exhorted to make revolution. Freed from attending classes indefinitely, elementary school age students were at their liberty to goof off, shout slogans, engage in vicious gang warfare, join Red Guard units and even denounce their teachers should the latter to be found in any way counter-revolutionary. It must for many have been one long mad holiday. For others, of course, a disaster.

No denouncing of staff for us though. By the time Lin Biao was crashing into the Mongolian steppes, following the alleged abortive coup against Mao, I was enduring the authoritarian strictures of the kind of regime that would have been a prime target in China. Surely if Comrades Deng and Liu could be denounced and struggled against, then the Black Gang of Meyers, Welch and Pierce, whose crimes were everyday apparent to students at Killarney Heights High, were worthy of at least one dàzìbào. Not for us The Thoughts of Chairman Mao - rather - The 1000 Concerns of A.M Meyers.

At some point though, there was a real time intersection between my Australian childhood and events in China. In 1976, whilst immersed in my final year HSC, I bought a short-wave radio. Nightly, I tuned in to the Voice of America and Radio Peking. 1976 was a biggie in Chinese History - the death of Zhou Enlai,, the second purging of Deng Xiaouping, the death of Mao Tse-Tung, the arrest and imprisonment of the Gang of Four, the post-Mao power struggle. I would spend some time going over my study notes, then take a break listening to the martial female voice on Radio Peking that barked the latest production figures and loudly denounced the Gang. That was a time!

As Exhibit A, consider this elementary school textbook cover from Guangxi province.



compared with, say, this one from NSW.

orphan florets of jasmine
spin in a high shout of wind
my son, elsewhere

Tom and I watched The Three Stooges last night. Not the original shorts from many years ago, but the Farrelly Brothers remake from 2012. As a child I loved The Three Stooges, whose black and white high-jinx, knuckleheadery and slapstick was a frequent guest in our lounge room. My father hated them. I don't really know why, though put-downs of anything were not uncommon for him.

Still, I approached the Hollywood homage with trepidation, having seen the disaster that was Thunderbirds, for example. I needn't have worried. Rather than a remake, it was more like a new episode. Well acted and containing all the key elements of the comedic form that made the Stooges popular, I am still laughing at some of the scenes. Most critics panned the movie as pointless, poorly plotted (as if this was ever a consideration in the originals!) and just plain silly. 'Why would anyone want to laugh at this dated nonsense?' is the subtext of most of these self-important screeds.

And I think that the answer is obvious. Low comedy, for want of a better term, has always been popular with ordinary people. It's lineage can be traced from the Greeks through Shakespeare, the Commedia dell'arte, puppetry like Punch and Judy, the music hall tradition and modern cartoon animation, to name but a few. It's popular with the masses, you might say, but not necessarily so with the political class (who can be easily pilloried) or high art comsumers, whose pretentions make if difficult for them to be anything other than sniffy.

If you find your self wanting to laugh our loud, but thinking that, for reasons of taste or cultivation you shouldn't, then maybe you have a problem.

Lately there has been a lot of chatter in the media about ageing. Serious chatter, that is, about the way Western societies prolong life, even after its intrinsic value has apparently ebbed away. Last night over dinner at a friend's house, the subject arose again. Is there a right time to go?

Such a debate is to be expected, given the emerging facts around ageing and the loss of quality of life that can occur. We have become remarkably adept at improving the length of the average life-span, largely through interventions that stave off death. My grandmother died from stroke at 60, fifty years ago, but medication today may have extended her life significantly. Ditto for many other illnesses that now can be ameliorated through medical science.

Longer life doesn't necessarily equate with better life. Sure, no one wants to die and the thought of total extinguishment is fraught. Nor do many folks, on the the hand, want to eek out their days in pain, confusion or debilitating decline. There may be a point at which returns diminish so rapidly that saying 'no more please' to medicines and procedures is a reasonable option.

The Baby Boomers are ageing and I guess that this is the reason for the debate. The immortals are coming to terms with mortality.

This being the school holidays, Tom and I went to an indoor mini-golf centre today. Ten theme-based rooms and 18 holes later, my son emerged with the better scorecard. I especially liked the last chamber, it's three holes weaving their way through scenes of alien invasion. A life-size Tardis sat confidently amidst the battle, my attempts to open its door without management noticing, in vain. So, no escape from the present was possible today.

This morning I lashed out $12 on ebay and bought Quotations of Chairman Mao, aka, The Little Red Book. Much as I would like to launch an antipodean Cultural Revolution (modern popular culture being predominantly a wasteland of sleaze and mediocrity), I'll settle for using it as a companion in my ongoing study of The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

The latter, of course, was no joking matter, much as I might make light of it. Good people were mercilessly cast aside, brutalised, murdered or forced to take their own lives on the whim of Mao and the collection of squabbling sycophants in the CCRG. No doubt there were some 'revisionist elements' in China in the years following the establishment of the PRC, but the chaotic and nihilistic swamp that the CR became was no means of establishing that as a fact.

If I could only be less serious in private, and more so in public.

Ouyang Xiu was a scholar, poet, writer, intellectual and statesman during the early part of the Song Dynasty. Coming to my attention as a result of a recent China History Podcast (thanks Laszlo), I decided to look for works of his that might be extant in English. I came across the following poem.

Scraps of cloud in rosy dusk- West Lake is good.
Flowers on the bank, duckweed on sand,
A hundred acres of peaceful ripples,
On the overgrown bank, no man- just the stroke of a boat.

South-west, across the moon, scattered clouds are drifting.
Cool rises at the terrace rail,
Lotus flowers' scent is clear,
Wind from the water's face makes the wine face sober.

In the West we tend to think that progress is somehow a constant, and linear, and that all received wisdom has passed down from the Greeks through the Romans through the Renaissance and so forth. A simple comparison of Song Dynasty China with any equivalent state in Europe at that time proves what nonsense this is.

Wind from the water's face makes the wine face sober is such a great piece of writing, a reminder of the human amidst the natural world. The pastoral scene, perfectly balanced, placid and idyllic, brings the poet to his senses.

Scotland votes for independence this week. In what might have seemed quite unlikely 12 months ago, there is a real possibility of a Yes vote in a few days time. Opinion polls appear to have everything tied up.

There has been a lot of talk about leaving the matter to the Scot-minus the expats-to decide. It's their business if they want to go it alone. That is certainly true. But it isn't the whole story or the only one. Here's why.

The United Kingdom, by any reckoning, has been one of the most successful unions of nations in history. It is rare for one nation to have had such an influence on people and events. The UK, despite its relatively small size, punches well above its weight. It is a presence at all the top forums around the globe and generally speaking, a force for good. I could recount a sizeable list of failings too, but few nations would escape such an examination. Perhaps none.

It strikes me that the truncated United Kingdom would lose some of the respect and influence that it currently wields and that is not a good thing for the planet. With armed psychopaths forming armies and ersatz states in the Middle East, a volatile and recalcitrant Russia and forces generally aligned with intolerance on the march, strong liberal democracies need to step up and take on the challenge.

I love Scotland and enjoyed my time there in 2005. I understand the impulse that 'independence' stirs in the blood. The sense of freedom and the call to a fresh start, unleashed from the apparent shackles of Westminster. I suspect that feeling might last a few years, only to be overtaken, eventually, by the realisation that something greater has been lost. I hope not. Truly.

After a number of false starts, Spring appears to have arrived. At least, the birds think so. Their song is lilting from all corners of my garden and beyond. Just now a Kookaburra has started up, it's insistent vibrato jarring in the mild sunshine.

Just now I submitted a lesson plan for the final phase of my online TESOL course with iTTT. I am not a huge fan of English grammar but there is a purpose in my getting better at it. I would like to re-invent myself as an English Doctor and offer my services in Sydney. I don't know how that will go, given the vagaries of any marketplace, but I am flexible about pretty everything. It is not about money, though I would like to at least break even. I just want to be useful in a way that I am quite good at. Communicating and motivating.

Just finished another instalment in my ongoing China project, this one, a short book on Bo Xilai. Garnaut's The Rise and Fall of the House of Bo charts the fortunes of the Bo dynasty in China. This is a family with venerable origins in the rise of the PRC, Bo Yibo being a Long March veteran and influential player in Chinese politics. His son, the charismatic and talented Bo Xilai, rose swiftly in the post-Mao world of reform, eventually becoming a senior politbureau member in Chongqing. Now Bo Xilai languishes in prison, following a sensational trial earlier this year. But this being the PRC, nothing is set in concrete. His father survived disgrace in the Cultural Revolution to mount a comeback in the 1980's. The younger Bo might yet rise again.

strangely on cue
tight-shirted September struts
an unloosed swagger

the day before spring
plum blossoms detonate with bees;
birds dreaming big sky

Sometimes Tom falls asleep on the lounge. Shortly after, I carry him to his room and put him to bed. He is growing heavier and I'm not sure how long I will be able to bear his weight.

These are some of my favourite times though. Pressed tight against me as I carry him to bed, I realise how strong love is that comes when it is less sought after. It is good to be a father. Very good. I don't think that there is any other experience like it and even though I came to fatherhood late, it has been an unconditional blessing.

Tom is a good boy with the potential to have a strong moral compass and a decent life. It is all about the choices he makes. Parents can only do so much.

I have just finished Peter Hessler's Country Driving. As the few readers of this blog will know, I have been immersed in Hessler's writing over the last few months. Articulate, compassionate and witty, Hessler takes three "journeys" inside China, though strictly speaking, not all of them are on-the-road journeys.

After an extensive navigation of the most remote parts of the Great Walls, Hessler settles down in a small remote village, renting a humble cottage with a fellow journalist. The town is called Sancha and lies in the mountains to the north of Beijing. Fluent in Chinese, he is able to become a genuine part (to the extent that any foreigner can) of village life. Uniquely placed as both an observer and an actor, Hessler describes the effects of the 'new capitalism' on old rural life: the decline of population and amenity and the yearning for ways of cashing in on the new economy. It is a sympathetic portrait of a village that will likely survive, if for no other reason than its proximity to Beijing. Affluence creates roads and tourism; Sancha seems destined to get a small slice of the pie.

Hessler's last foray is to the coast in Zhejiang province. The once rural town of Lishui is about to be hit by the tsunmami of economic development. Mountains are raised to provide land for factories. The latter spring up like mushrooms after hot rain. Hessler follows the beginnings and growth of a brand new bra-clip manufacturer, a niche industry that the anxious owners hope will lead to riches. In tracking the fortunes of various factory employees, he is able to demonstrate the extraordinary adaptability of the (mainly) rural Chinese who flock to these shining edifices in search of new dreams.

This is such a great book. Well done Mr Hessler. More please!

We have had a lot of rain - an absurd amount for August really - and today has been a blur of showers and patchy sunshine. I have a small washing line full of clothes dangling hopefully in the still chilly breeze. Tom is at school and I have finished a brief rehearsal for the cafe tomorrow. Now I am chatting to a friend in China on QQ for the first time in months. She is a teacher in Xian, the ancient capital of China.

I would truly like to ignore the news for a while. I thought that it might just be me who was feeling overwhelmed by the sheer freight of bad headlines, but no. The other day the experienced journalist Monica Attard, whilst in the midst of a panel interview, said that she had despaired of the terrible events in the news. She had even stopped looking, for a while. So, it's not just me.

In any event, I fall back on my earlier theory about the way information is created and disseminated in the modern era. It happens at lightning speed and in an environment in which publication is virtually instantaneous and omnipresent. It is everywhere and all the time.

Compare that with, say, how long it took for the First Fleets safe arrival at Sydney Cove to reach London in 1788.

Tom has been playing football for the Hazelbrook Hawks for two seasons now. After looking a little lost for a while, he has started to improve noticeably over the past six weeks or so. I like him to play team games as being an only child is not the clearest path to learning how to co-operate with his peers. I hope that he wants to play next year too as this will consolidate his skills, both personal and physical. Another parent, Tristan, snapped this excellent action shot of Tom two weeks ago, and I reproduce it below.

Confirmation bias is one of the reasons why two people can see the same event in a radically different way. Simply put, it is the process by which each of us filters our environment in such a way that it tends to confirm our world view. Broadly speaking, if you have, say, a pessimistic view of the world around you (that, for example, it's dangerous), then you will quite naturally hone in on information that confirms this view. You will see the headline about the terrorist threat, and 'filter out' the larger headline about good economic growth.

We all do it and the only way to mitigate against it is to monitor yourself and ask questions, constantly. Of course, that is hard work and it is easier to leap straight back into the breach, where well-worn mental threads bind you to a way of thinking and acting. Confirmation bias happens on both a macro and micro level. It is just as relevant to the person who seeks out information about their unpopularity at the office party, in spite of evidence to the contrary, to the person who scans the headlines or the news aggregators. We select data in and select it out to reflect our own biases and to confirm what we already know about ourselves and the world. Trouble is that what we know is often inaccurate or self-defeating.

Being a cautious optimist myself, I remain hopeful of good news in most situations. But I suffer from confirmation bias like everyone else. I try hard to see the good in the world, but the overwhelming narrative of war, atrocity, barbarity, drugs, pornography and human insufficiency is powerful. Yes, there is a media bias towards bad, sensational or disturbing news, undoubtedly, which I factor in. It is hard, in a 24/7 information-saturated climate, to find a reasonable and rational middle path. And yet, it is possible.

a client

for you, this shaking.
outside, sun works the steely earth,
'darkly' inside, you cry

On the subject of live gigs at the Warehouse, a friend took a few shots last Friday. I guess one day I might look back and think that I did what I set out to do.

It's now over two years since I started playing at the Warehouse Cafe at Anglicare in Mt Druitt. Once a week on a Friday morning. I took it up initially as a challenge, for while I could easily put together a few songs for an intimate music group every so often, having a full repertoire and performing before an audience of strangers was another thing altogether.

Getting over my fear of making, and then showing, my mistakes was a critical part of the journey. In the past I have always winced at missed chords or vocals, feeling that somehow I should be somewhere closer to perfect every time. This is not a standard I recommend to anyone. Better to learn, as I think I have, to relax a little and have a small, inner, undetectable laugh at myself for these musical blemishes.

So now I seem to have become part of the furniture at the cafe. It is taken for granted that I'll be there, in my spot, an ambient part of the background. I am happy with that. For how much longer, I can't say. The gigs have lost the sense of challenge, though I still enjoy myself, for the most part.

As for the repertoire - it has developed over time. I play more songs that I like, though I still have to be mindful that most of the material needs to be familiar. So, cue Elvis and Crowded House.

I am lucky to have this chance. It's unlikely to come again and what is very real at one moment in time, is gone the next. Most often, forever.

The internet is a place of wonder and a place of danger. There is also a lot of stuff in between those two positions, much of it frivolous, ephemeral or insignificant. Like this blog. It need not exist but it does by virtue of google and my will. The internet is encyclopaedic in its breadth but somewhat tabloid in its delivery.

So what do I do as a father of an 8 year old who is curious and demanding of finding out? Like his cohort, Tom loves games of all sorts and cartoons and videos and all of this leaves a wide margin for entering both grey zones and dangerous precincts.

Tom has a little android ipad knockoff that does a reasonable job though it really is just a game mule. I have the unit's google search filters set to a maximum safety level but this does not apparently block everything that it inappropriate for a young mind. A doctor I see sometimes argues a strong libertarian case for everything being okay. So long as it's contextualised and a discussion is had between parents and children, there is no problem. It is educative and builds character, he says.

I'm not so sure. Clinical work on the effects of pornography point to potentially permanent psychological harm (addiction, dysfunction etc) with repercussions for romantic and committed relationships and much else besides. But the genie is out of the bottle.

So I worry about Tom and the things he might see online. It is not mollycoddling or cotton-wooling, but rather, giving him the chance to be a kid and to live, for the time-being, in a world that doesn't seem too risky or dark.

Never mind the headlines.

I have been doing a Tesol online course for about six weeks now and it surprises me just how little English grammar I remember. Some of the names and constructions I recall, though more likely I came across these studying French in junior high school. The fact is is that a lot of technical grammar simply isn't taught any more to native speakers, nor should it be, frankly. But for new learners of English, being able to identify and name language components is useful. It helps to be able to to refer to a participle or a gerund and know that everybody in the room has a handle on the conversation.

Why am I doing such a course? I have in my mind the idea that I might become a kind of travelling English doctor, seeking out new clients and experiences in Sydney. It's hard to know how this might work - I have a few notions in my head - but I would like to give it a try. Teaching is close to my favourite thing and being the social animal that I am, this seems like a good fit.

Since I started using my combustion heater again, Tom has been busy with a little hatchet I bought him. Even on very cold mornings, he is keen to get outside and chop at dead wood. At the moment I can see him playing out the back with a length of bamboo, in imitation, perhaps, of a martial arts exponent. I have a lovely garden and should we sell, I would certainly miss it.

on hearing that a friend had changed her ticket from a doomed flight

who took my place?
summery jet-stream, wintry descent,
dark fields, disallocating

7-1

cold-shouldered waking,
I undream, shedding my disbelief,
dissociations of samba

what to say - sorry?
to wood shed like sharp tears,
entombed in mulch

late beams splay
the cold stump of an old tree
I just felled

Ah, the sound of chain-saws in the morning light! As mentioned in an earlier post, I am having two old trees taken down. One is dead and other is certainly on its way out. It's expensive to do but it is the right time to do it, loath as I am to cut down any trees.

Xiaoyu will be coming here at the end of the year. It was my idea, because really, I could only have gone to China for a couple of weeks. She will be able to stay for a couple of months. This gives us the chance to get to know each other and discover whether we have a future together. The signs are good so far, but I think a living together immersion will be just the right test. Xiaoyu is studying English so I hope that we can communicate a little more freely than we were able to in February. Most interesting for me will be how she deals with the cultural difference. Despite its rush into capitalist modernity, Chinese culture is fundamentally different to Western culture and it will be a challenge for her.

Tom comes back from his mum today, which makes me very happy. It gets kind of lonely around here when he's gone.

I have a friend who is the sweetest, loveliest person I know. She moved house about six months ago and I miss her terribly. Yet despite all the great qualities I see in her - honesty, kindness, intelligence and funniness - to name but a few, her life is almost continually in chaos. Relationships go to pot, her work choices turn sour and she is left wondering what calamity will strike next. It is both sad and perplexing for me. But the truth is that in her, I often see myself. By which I mean, we are very similar in nature.

I have had my fair share of chaos too. When I think about it, many of the calamities visited upon my friend have also been a part of my life too. I see common threads of shared experience. For me though, some of these have been self-inflicted. Others have come out of what appears to be thin air. Everybody has the need to be loved. Everybody craves a security of sorts. Uncertainty is difficult to live with. How we deal with uncertainty and our overarching need for acceptance is a dominating theme in most human scenarios.

It's funny how we can look at the person in the car next to us, or in the shopping centre, or even in our mind's eye, and think with such conviction that they have better, less complicated lives. The truth is, with few exceptions, that hurt and pain and insecurity and the sense that "I am not good enough" is everywhere. The outward appearance of things is one of the great deceits of our time. Of this and any time.