Cold Winter Now

Awhile back, Mrs Fitz bought me a Kathmandu puffer-type jacket, and one for herself, from her Airport Shop.

They are really good things. I'm noticing, coming home, its about 11.30pm now, and its about 5 degrees C and I'm really comfy. Not cold, not hot. Just had a walk around the cold courtyard, and impressed upon it some more ideas of what to do with it, and came inside. Bloody cold inside the house too, still no need to turn on the heater.

We don't want to use the big gas heater in the roof much, although its good, and very fast, until we see how the bills are going.

Got a nasty shock last month. The gas bill went from $50/month to $280/month and we don't want that to happen again. Damn you, Zelensky, you and your cohort of n'er do wells and certifiable rapscallions, spending all my future pension. Ah well, after that I guess the USA will be spending all my pension on not giving us the nuclear submarines we paid for. You can trust the Americans in that way. They never pay their debts.

It's about an hour and 15 minute drive from work to home at night. Mostly all freeways, but still slow, as someone is usually fixing up some part of it around the clock.

I stopped at McDonalds on the way home and got us some warming food-like stuff to eat when she gets home soon from work and we have our enjoyable late night long yack about life, the universe, and everything. Some nice wine is left too.

Work was good. I love not being in charge. I can manage to look after 8 folk and not be so concerned about the other 14 or so. After all, my stoic stellar career in nursing is well and truly over and now this is just rewarding part time stuff that pays okay, especially on weekends, and I'm okay at it still, and still learning, and I like the company I work for, and the folk I work with, and that's a pretty rare gift at any time.

Work was good. Interesting how group dynamics can change so quickly with the absence of just one person and the addition of another. Amazing. From cohesion and compassion to down right horribility. From no problems to all problems. I guess the whole world could be like that. And, of course, there's always Protestant Christians, always deceitful, and up to no good, as we know, and as we were warned about in that holy precious Catholic primary school of the one true faith.

I work with a lot of Chinese and Indian and Sri Lankan and Irish nurses, and that's great. I feel at home.

Then, an extra benefit at the end of the day, I get to come home and study the garden.

Yes, I'll need to raid the consultant's garden again for some more nasturtium plants, and then put them in the birdbath here and let them soak for a day or two, then put down 4 more bags of earth in the side yard, and then plant them out all the way to the end of the yard where Phil, the statue, our Gardening Angel, will look after them through the cold winter.

Spring could well be very interesting.

Gardens are great. they teach you to plan the future, but not too much, and without great certainty, because the world is like that, and, indeed, so are we.

I recall looking after a soldier who eventually went off and killed himself. Jumped out of a high tower on the Coast. He said 'well, we rolled into the town, in .......... in Afghanistan, and we were all hootched up on crack, and then some raghead kid fired an RPG that got caught in the steel wire, and didn't go off, it just fizzed there, and it really spooked us all, and we were so fuckin twitchy, so, we all got out of the truck, and just killed everyone in the town. We used so much ordnance that we ran out.' 'Later, the Army psychologist said that we did a good job. He did suggest that in future we try not to use all the RPGs and ammunition we had, as it was in short supply, but... we did a good job. We should be proud. We did the job. We did a good job. I don't know if we did a good job.'

Ben Roberts Smith: pride goeth before the Fall. You have fallen, dear Ben. Pour yourself an icy beer into the prosthetic limb and have a deep sigh. Why you? Well...there's a reason for that. There's stuff you should do, and there's stuff you should not. I know its a drag, but that's true. Sure, we should never have gone to war in Iraq or Afghanistan, they were evil errors of governance, but, still, there on the ground, once you're there and you wanted to be there, you just don't cut loose, you have to make sense of it in a way that doesn't involve killing innocent muslim folk and poor families who actually have to live there. There's a lesson in that for you. It's a life lesson. Learn it.

Koreas

 I find it very interesting that even though North and South Korea are very different, there are fascinating things about both that are linked.

Although the South is a very advanced high technology first world nation, the personal goals of people seem to involve the central significance of wealth, prestige, status, and family, all equally. That's quite a frontier secular world.

One would think that in such a modern and secular state, that there wouldn't be much time for religion or mysticism, but, indeed, there is a great depth of 'the spiritual' within the society.

The North, of course, is a bit more obvious in crowning the Supreme Leader as a mystical shaman-like persona.

In this way we can see the ties that bind North and South together. In family, and in the mystic.

This is my step daughter, Tianshu, from sound-recording goats in Kathmandu in 2018, to completing her studies at RMIT Melbourne Australia, in 2019, and today, working in Shanghai, 2023 Well done, young lady.